Software Engineer (Ruby on Rails + React)

Smaller Earth Group; Liverpool; On-site; GBP 34,000 - 46,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remuneration £40k

Annual leave 28 days

Pension 5%/3%

Mental health support

Development budget

Frontier AI tools

Job summary

Smaller Earth Group is seeking an engineer for Postcard—the platform powering our cultural exchange programmes. You’ll join a small, internal product team that values real impact and fast delivery, with end-to-end ownership from idea to deployment.

You’ll work across Rails and React, focus on UI/UX details, and tackle scalable, high-visibility projects. The role supports remote work, with occasional in-person meetups in Liverpool, and a strong emphasis on psychological safety and continuous

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building and scaling web platforms with Rails and/or React.
• Full-stack capabilities across front-end and back-end.
• Eye for UI/UX details—empty states, sensible defaults, helpful error messages.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve the Postcard platform, shipping features that move the business forward.
• Collaborate closely with users and employers to solve real problems like applications, payments, and placement matching.
• Fight for quality with lean development while maintaining speed and reliability.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

React

Full stack

UI/UX

Ship projects

Lean development

Tools

Rails framework

MySQL

Sidekiq

Stripe

Capistrano

RSpec

Turbo/Stimulus

Job description

We're looking for an engineer to join the team behind Postcard — the platform that runs Smaller Earth Group's cultural exchange programmes. It's the software that takes a young person from "I think I want to work a summer abroad" all the way to standing in front of a cabin of kids in Maine, or a chalet in the Alps, having the time of their life.

You'd be joining a small, internal product team. 'Small' means your work carries real weight — what you ship genuinely moves the business, and there's nowhere for good (or bad) decisions to hide. 'Internal product team' means you're close to the people who actually use Postcard every day, and close to the participants and employers on the other end of it. No ticket factories, no three sprints of refinement before anyone writes a line of code. Just real problems — applications, payments, matching the right person to the right placement — and the satisfaction of solving them properly.

Postcard runs the core of a global business. So there's the usual tension we find genuinely fun: keep a mature platform stable and trustworthy, while moving fast enough to build the things that'll carry it forward.

The stack

Ruby on Rails 8 and MySQL doing the heavy lifting, with a mix of legacy JavaScript and Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) on the front end. Background work on Sidekiq, payments on Stripe, deployments via Capistrano and tests in RSpec. We also have two user-facing portals written in React which interface with Postcard over an API.

This role is ideal if you

• Have extensive experience building and scaling web platforms with Ruby on Rails and/or React, and genuine enthusiasm for the framework
• Are happy working across the full stack
• Have an eye for good UI/UX — you sweat the details users feel but never mention: empty states, sensible defaults, error messages that actually help
• Can point to projects you've driven to completion, keeping one eye on scalability the whole way
• Value lean development — you take pride in shipping quickly without trading away quality
• Like the idea of working AI-first, but staying fully accountable for everything you ship
• Want to help foster a culture of psychological safety, inclusivity, and continuous improvement

You don't need to know anything about summer camps or cultural exchange. (Fair warning, though: you'll absorb a worrying amount of knowledge about placement matching and visa processes either way.)

This role is also open to newcomers to Rails and React — if our stack isn't the one you've worked in, but you can point to solid, proven experience building real things in other frameworks, we'd still love to hear from you. Good engineers pick up Rails fast, and we're happy to help you do it.

The hiring process

Our process has a few stages:

1. An introductory call with our CTO (Ross). This is mostly to introduce Smaller Earth Group, the technology team, and the role. Ross will walk you through the rest of the process and answer any immediate questions.
2. A remote technical interview (with Ross and another member of the tech team). Beforehand, you'll be given a small challenge to work through (roughly 1–2 hours). We'll spend most of the interview discussing your approach and digging into a few areas together — it's much less about a "right answer" and more about how you think through problems and tackle them.
3. An offer!

Benefits

• Remuneration — £40,000
• Annual leave — 28 days plus bank holidays
• Pension — 5% employee and 3% employer contributions (5% from October 2026)
• Location — most of the product team work remotely. We're headquartered in Liverpool and meet there in person occasionally (~twice a year) — good coffee, decent views, mild peer pressure to talk product for lunch. Remote or in the office, we require a right to work in the UK
• Mental health support — free same-day therapist support for all employees via Spill
• Development budget — self-development is a company value, and we provide budget for staff to explore learning opportunities
• Tooling — paid access to frontier AI tools: Claude (including Claude Code), ChatGPT, and whatever else looks promising. If a tool makes you faster, we'll get it

Why Smaller Earth Group

• As of 2024, we're an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) — the company is owned by the people who work in it, including (if you join) you
• Modern office space on the iconic Docks in Liverpool city centre, with scenic views and dangerous proximity to good lunch spots
• Work-life balance: flexible arrangements, whether that's remote or our relaxed workspace at Avenue HQ in Liverpool
• International travel opportunities: it's what we do, after all…

About Smaller Earth Group

Established in 1999 in Liverpool, England, Smaller Earth Group is a leading global provider of cultural exchange programmes and technology.

We operate brands across 17 countries, with a strong presence in the UK, Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific.

The short version: we help young people work, travel, and grow — and we build the technology that makes it happen.

Smaller Earth Group is an equal opportunities employer — we welcome and encourage applications from everyone regardless of background.