Staff Software Engineer

RASPBERRY PI FOUNDATION; Hartford; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An educational charity in the UK is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead technical efforts and mentor engineering teams. In this role, you will set standards for best practices, propose architectural solutions, and communicate technical decisions effectively. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in Ruby on Rails or React, be adept at troubleshooting complex systems, and have a proven track record in delivering Agile projects. Join us to make a significant impact on our mission of empowering young people through technology.

Benefits

25 days paid annual leave

8% employer pension contribution

Comprehensive private healthcare

Flexible working arrangements

Generous family leave

Life assurance and income protection

Investing in learning and development

Cycle-to-Work and Season Ticket Loan schemes

Qualifications

• Experience developing engineering talent through mentoring and coaching.
• Led complex technical delivery projects in an Agile environment.
• In-depth knowledge of Ruby on Rails or front-end frameworks like React.
• Deep technical expertise and excellent troubleshooting skills.
• Experience optimizing distributed systems' performance.
• Track record of implementing security practices.
• Experience architecting infrastructure on platforms like AWS.
• Ability to communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Knowledge of engineering patterns and standards.
• Experience in documentation writing across audiences.
• Experience in promoting Agile methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Act as technical lead on various projects and services.
• Write secure and performance-driven code as examples of best practice.
• Propose architectural solutions for technical challenges.
• Lead by example through code reviews and test-driven development.
• Mentor and coach senior engineers.
• Resolve technical issues for delivery teams.
• Own the technical quality of projects.
• Continuously improve project quality and processes.
• Define and manage technical operations of products.
• Articulate technical decisions to various stakeholders.

Skills

Mentoring and coaching engineering talent

Agile project delivery

Ruby on Rails or React

Troubleshooting and debugging

Performance metrics optimization

Security implementations

Architecting cloud infrastructure

Collaborating with stakeholders

Documentation for technical audiences

Communicating technology decisions

Promoting Agile practices

Tools

PostgreSQL

Terraform

CircleCI

Heroku

Cloudflare

Job description

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead and set an example for our engineering teams. As a staff engineer you will take on the technical leadership of our products and services setting an example for your team to follow and sharing best practices in all technical domains. You will have impact across multiple teams as you set standards and ways of working making important technical decisions on projects and services that will directly impact hundreds of thousands of users. Youll be an expert in at least one technical domain and engineers across the organisation will consult you for advice. Youll be given the space to take a long-term view in your technical decisions and will spend time working on improving the team processes practices tools and ways of working working on your team as well as in your team. We work hard to make sure that the Foundation is a place where everyone is supported to do the best work of their careers. We have a flexible and collaborative approach to all aspects of our work. If youre the right person for the job well make it work for you and you can be confident that youll be joining an exceptional team of people who care about our mission and each other.

Responsibilities

• Act as technical lead on the Foundations various projects and services
• Write code that serves as an example of best practice in security accessibility performance and robustness to the rest of your team.
• Propose and implement architectural solutions to solve the Foundations technical challenges building highly scalable and robust web applications and systems
• Set an example for the members of your delivery team and across the engineering organisation leading by example through code reviews writing secure and scalable code and by following a test-driven approach
• Share your knowledge proactively through the mentoring and coaching of senior engineers
• Accelerate delivery teams and projects through finding practical solutions to blocking technical issues and defining an effective development process
• Be accountable for the quality of the code for your team with ownership of the technical aspects and architecture of key projects.
• Continuously improve quality in your work and support others to do the same providing technical and architectural support to other delivery teams
• Define and own the technical operations of your teams products and services
• Articulate technical decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders with a clear focus on user needs and business value.

Recruitment Process

• As part of your application you will be asked to respond to a small number of questions that we will use to screen your eligibility for the role. You will also be asked to provide your cv and a short cover letter.
• Eligible applications will be reviewed by our recruitment team and the hiring manager.
• A small number of candidates will be invited to a phone call with the hiring manager. The purpose of this call is to check our understanding of your application and to answer any questions you have.
• We normally have two interviews at least one of which will take place in-person. Interviews will be with the hiring manager and at least one other colleague.
• You will usually be asked to undertake a work-based assessment in advance of your interviews. This will be an opportunity for you to show how you would perform some part of the role. You will be given advance notice and clear instructions.
• If you have any questions about or feel that you need any adjustments to the recruitment process including adjustments for neurodiversity please contact our People and Culture team at .

Qualifications

• Experience developing engineering talent through mentoring and coaching.
• Led complex technical delivery projects in an Agile environment.
• In depth knowledge of Ruby on Rails or front end web frameworks (such as React) and significant experience with RDBMS (such as PostgreSQL).
• Deep technical expertise and excellent troubleshooting and debugging skills including in debugging opaque distributed system issues without clear causal chains.
• Experience optimising the performance of distributed systems. Including instrumenting services for performance metrics monitoring performance and using the insights gained to design performant systems.
• A track record of implementing proactive security tooling techniques measures and practices.
• A proven track record of architecting and managing infrastructure on platforms such as Heroku Cloudflare and AWS using tools and services such as Terraform and CircleCI.
• Experience collaborating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders to gather requirements and define elegant technical solutions.
• An in-depth knowledge of engineering patterns and standards.
• Experience writing documentation for a variety of technical and non-technical audiences including specifications architecture proposals.
• Experience appropriately communicating technology decisions to a variety of stakeholders.
• Experience disseminating Agile ways of working and best practices across teams and organisations.

Benefits

• Paid time addition to public holidays full-time employees in the UK receive 25 days of paid annual leave initially rising to 30 days after five years service plus 3 additional days of paid leave for the company-wide closure at the end of each year.
• Pension. We provide an 8% employer contribution on top of your minimum 4% employee contribution.
• Private healthcare. We provide comprehensive private healthcare for all employees through Vitality Plus.
• Flexible working. We have clear policies to provide flexibility over when and where you work helping you balance work responsibilities with the rest of your life.
• Support for parents and carers. We provide generous family leave and flexibility for parents and carers.
• Life assurance and income protection. We provide life assurance and income protection schemes to provide peace of mind for you and your family.
• Investing in learning and development. We invest in your growth and development including through access to learning resources and training with dedicated time for all employees.
• Travel to work. Through our Cycle-to-Work and Season Ticket Loan schemes we support cost effective and sustainable travel to work.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based educational charity with the mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. Our products achieve this mission by providing high-quality learning experiences online and for free that engage and inspire young people to explore computing and digital making outside of school.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is an independent charity with a global mission to enable all young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. We empower schools to teach computer science and AI literacy through free curricula classroom resources purpose built software tools and professional development for teachers. We inspire young people to become tech creators through the worlds largest networks of coding clubs. We undertake original research that informs our work and which we use to advance the field of computer science education more broadly. All of our resources and learning experiences are available for anyone to use at no cost. We are particularly focused on creating opportunities for young people who experience educational disadvantage and those who come from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in technology industries. Over the past decade we have supported hundreds of thousands of educators and tens of millions of students. We have teams in six countries (India Ireland Kenya South Africa the UK and US) and partnerships with mission-aligned non-profit organisations in over 60 countries. We are at the forefront of the global educational movement to expand access to computer science education and AI literacy. You can learn more about our work in our latest Annual Report.