Senior Software Engineer - Recontact

Our Future Health; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading health charity in London is looking for a Senior Engineer to join their Recontact team. This role involves developing backend services, ensuring data security, and working with diverse teams to enhance health research systems. The ideal candidate will have extensive knowledge in building cloud-hosted services, familiarity with relevant technologies, and a passion for improving public health outcomes through innovative solutions. This position offers a competitive salary starting from £85,000 and great benefits including flexible working options.

Benefits

Generous Pension Scheme

30 Days Holiday + Bank Holidays

Enhanced Parental Leave

Career Growth & Development funding

Cycle to Work Scheme

Home & Tech Savings

Employee Referral Bonus

Wellbeing Support

Flexible working arrangements

Qualifications

• Knowledge of building cloud-hosted backend services with Python.
• Experience in using agile development practices.
• Familiarity with security and compliance standards.

Responsibilities

• Develop cohort selection capabilities for the Recontact system.
• Create participant-facing flows for consent and engagement.
• Design secure systems managing sensitive health data.

Skills

Building cloud-hosted backend services using open source technologies

Building backend systems for data movement and storage

Experience with Azure, AWS, or GCP

Infrastructure as Code knowledge

Data modelling and design patterns

Agile development practices

Managing software components in production

Working with sensitive personal data

Cross-functional team collaboration

Mentorship and technical guidance

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Docker

PostgreSQL

Git

GitHub

Job description

We’re looking for a full-stack Senior Engineer to join our Recontact team. Recontact studies allow researchers to invite participants into further studies, making them a core part of Our Future Health’s mission to accelerate health research.

This is a chance to work in a small, growing team where you’ll contribute both to early design and hands-on delivery. You’ll help shape and build the systems that enable Recontact, making pragmatic decisions about what to develop, when to reuse, and how to integrate with existing platforms.

The work will involve developing cohort selection capabilities, creating participant-facing flows for consent and engagement, and designing secure, auditable systems that manage sensitive health data with trust and transparency. It will also include implementing mechanisms for invitations and communications at scale, as well as supporting experimentation to understand what drives participant engagement.

The role combines practical engineering with opportunities to influence how Recontact evolves, ensuring we deliver value quickly while laying the foundations for scalable solutions in the future.

Our Future Health will be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to detect, prevent and treat diseases. We are a charity, supported by the UK Government in partnership with charities and industry. We work closely with the NHS and with public authorities across all nations and regions of the UK.

Our plan is to bring together 5 million volunteers from right across the UK who will be asked to contribute information to help build one of the most detailed pictures we have ever had of people’s health. Researchers will be able to use this information to make new discoveries about human health and diseases. So future generations can live in good health for longer.

Requirements

Technical skills

• Knowledge and experience of building cloud-hosted backend services using open source technologies in a start-up or scale-up environment, ideally using Python, though equivalent experience is welcome.
• Knowledge and experience of building backend systems for data movement, processing and storage and provision of services for allowing access to data by non-technical users.
• Prior experience with Azure (ideally), AWS or GCP.
• Comfortable working with Infrastructure as Code, ideally with knowledge of Terraform, and familiar with containerisation (Kubernetes, Docker).
• Knowledge of good data modelling and design patterns; in-depth knowledge of relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL) and familiarity with other types of data store (blob, document, graph).
• Good experience in using modern, agile development practices like code review, TDD, CI/CD and pairing using tools like Git and GitHub.
• Experience of operationally managing software components once live, including; observability, logging, metrics, error reporting, debugging and live incident management.
• Experience of working with sensitive personal data, ideally with an awareness of security and compliance standards.
• Experience working in/with cross-functional teams consisting of e.g. engineers, product, UX and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to communicate with stakeholders and audiences at different levels, translating technical concepts into practical implications.
• Experience working in small, growing organisations with a high degree of ambiguity, where flexibility is valued.
• Strong understanding of software quality principles and practices.
• Comfortable providing mentorship and technical guidance to less experienced engineers.
• Comfortable facilitating technical discussions, encouraging collaboration, and helping the team converge on sound decisions.
• Competitive salary starting from £85,000
• Generous Pension Scheme – We invest in your future with employer contributions of up to 12%.
• 30 Days Holiday + Bank Holidays – Enjoy a generous holiday allowance with the flexibility to take bank holidays when it suits you.
• Enhanced Parental Leave – Supporting you during life’s biggest moments.
• Career Growth & Development – £500 per year to spend on Learnerbly, our learning platform, plus regular appraisals and development opportunities.
• Cycle to Work Scheme – Save 25-39% on a new bike and accessories through salary sacrifice.
• Home & Tech Savings – Get up to 8% off on IKEA and Currys products, spreading the cost over 12 months through salary sacrifice
• £1,000 Employee Referral Bonus – Know someone amazing? Get rewarded for bringing them on board!
• Wellbeing Support – Access to Mental Health First Aiders, plus 24/7 online GP services and an Employee Assistance Programme for you and your family.
• A Great Place to Work – We have a lovely Central London office in Holborn, and offer flexible and remote working arrangements.

Join us - let’sprevent disease together.

We advise not delaying your application, as this advert may close early if a high number of applications are received.

At Our Future Health, we recognise the importance of having a diverse workforce and ensuring that all candidates, regardless of their background, have equitable access to our application process. We proactively encourage applicants who identify as having a disability, neurodiversity, or long-term health conditions to let us know if they require any reasonable adjustments as part of their application process.

If you do require any reasonable adjustments, please email us at [e-mail]