Software Engineer

Unity Five Ltd; Exeter; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A software development company in Exeter is looking for a passionate Software Engineer to deliver high-quality solutions. You'll work with a team focused on PHP and modern frameworks, driving initiatives from concept to deployment. You'll have opportunities for mentorship and collaboration in a culture prioritizing continuous improvement. The role includes a competitive salary and a benefits package, including private medical insurance and enhanced leave policies.

Benefits

Private medical insurance

Enhanced maternity & paternity leave

Increased holiday with long service

Enhanced pension scheme

Qualifications

• Ability to deliver well-engineered solutions.
• Strong competency in PHP and version control.
• Proficiency in clean code principles and maintainability.

Responsibilities

• Deliver reliable engineering solutions.
• Collaborate in code reviews and share knowledge.
• Participate in technical discussion and design.

Skills

Strong problem-solving skills

Proficient in PHP

Familiarity with version control (e.g. Git)

Experience with modern PHP web frameworks

Understanding of CI/CD pipelines

Job description

As a Software Engineer, you'll play a key role in bringing ideas from our product backlog to life—whether that's building new features that delight customers, shaping strategic improvements, or helping reduce technical debt. You'll have opportunities to take ownership of your own work while also contributing through collaboration, mentorship, and thoughtful input on design decisions across technical, architectural, or UI/UX aspects. No matter your experience level, your curiosity, initiative, and willingness to grow will be valued.

Role Overview

As an Engineer, you'll play a key part in shaping and delivering work from our product backlog, including new features, customer-focused enhancements, strategic business requirements, bug fixes and technical improvements as prioritised by the Product Owner. You'll take ownership of your work while also contributing to wider initiatives through collaboration, mentoring, or involvement in technical, architectural, or UI/UX design discussions. You'll guide work through the full engineering lifecycle—from writing clean, maintainable code through to code review, testing and deployment into production. Quality matters to us, so a thoughtful approach to performance, security, and team-wide engineering standards is highly valued. We're looking for someone who respects existing technologies and practices but is equally enthusiastic about helping shape their evolution as the team and business continue to grow—always with a humble, team-first mindset.

Accountabilities, responsibilities & main duties

• Apply strong problem-solving skills to deliver reliable, well-engineered solutions
• Demonstrate strong competency in PHP and version control (e.g. Git)
• Show proficiency or strong aptitude for modern PHP web frameworks
• Work with modern tooling and practices, including automated testing, CI/CD pipelines and code review workflows
• Champion clean code principles, maintainability and long-term scalability in every solution
• Understand and contribute towards high-level architectural decisions and patterns
• Contribute to evolving our engineering standards, tooling and best practices as the team scales
• Appreciate the value of release management, workflow discipline (Jira or similar) and version control for maintaining traceability
• Use appropriate engineering patterns and practices, while helping the team identify and avoid anti-patterns
• Follow agreed processes while having the confidence to suggest thoughtful improvements
• Build end-to-end solutions that deliver real value to users, with visibility over the impact of your work in production
• Have the freedom to propose and experiment with new approaches, frameworks or integrations that improve developer effectiveness
• Communicate clearly across engineering peers, Product Owners and other parts of the business
• Participate in collaborative code reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions to help raise the technical bar
• Bring a positive, collaborative attitude and work effectively within an agile team
• Provide meaningful input into planning from both technical and functional perspectives, with a strong sense of ownership over delivery
• Embrace a “fail fast, learn fast” mindset and contribute to a culture of continuous improvement
• Offer guidance to more junior Engineers and support team leadership where needed
• Take pride in delivering secure, performant and user-focused features that directly contribute to product success

Experience with other languages such as Python or Java is a bonus, but not essential.

If you're passionate about PHP engineering and eager to grow, we'd love to hear from you.

Benefits

In return you will be offered a competitive salary and benefits package (training, financial, health and wellbeing and social). Unity5 offers private medical insurance, enhanced maternity & paternity leave, an enhanced holiday package increasing with long service and an enhanced pension scheme.

Unity5 boasts an open, collaborative and learning-driven atmosphere, where you will work alongside a team of progressive experts in their fields, always rising to meet new challenges. You will be part of a culture that values and promotes a sense of community and connections with others. We are stable and established, with the quiet confidence of knowing our solutions deliver real value and growth to our clients.