Senior Software Engineer - Clojure

JobCubby; Chicago, Northern (IL, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

25 days annual leave

Parental leave

Insurance & retirement provisions

Learning budget

Hybrid work policy (Oslo)

Job summary

Ardoq is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own large areas of the Clojure codebase, shaping capabilities and ensuring the platform scales while keeping reliability high. The role emphasizes immutable data and pure functions, with a REPL-driven workflow that supports fast iteration.

You will collaborate across teams, mentor others, and push back on shortcuts that would accrue debt down the line. A global, hybrid team awaits with stock options and growth opportunities.

Qualifications

• You've built and maintained production systems in Clojure or another functional, JVM-based language.
• You think natively in immutable data structures, pure functions, and the REPL-driven workflow.
• You can hold multiple constraints and system behaviors in your head and turn complexity into clear recommendations.

Responsibilities

• Own complex systems: design, build, and improve services across large areas of the codebase.
• Pay down technical debt and architect durable solutions.
• Debug at the system level across multiple services and components.
• Raise architectural feedback in code reviews to improve team standards.
• Mentor and multiply: share knowledge and grow others' functional programming craft.

Skills

Clojure

Functional programming

JVM

SaaS

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, Clojure at Ardoq

Help turn Ardoq's living model of the enterprise into fast, reliable software that customers trust every day.

The Ardoq story

Ardoq is one of Norway's most exciting scale-ups, a truly global company built out of Oslo. We are a SaaS platform that helps organizations understand, manage, and evolve their complex digital landscape. By providing a dynamic, collaborative "digital twin" of their business, we connect systems, people, and processes to drive better decision-making and accelerate digital transformation.

Today, we help some of the world's most complex organizations (like ExxonMobil and British Telecom) gain clarity in a changing world. We are backed by leading global tech investors, including EQT and One Peak, giving us the stability of a mature company with the speed and soul of a startup.

About the role

Ardoq's platform runs on a proprietary graph foundation that turns fragmented enterprise data into a living, connected model, and a meaningful part of that platform is written in Clojure. As a Senior Software Engineer on the team, you'll take ownership of large, sometimes loosely defined areas of the codebase: designing new capabilities, hardening what's already there, and making sure the decisions you make today hold up as the platform scales. You'll think natively in immutable data structures and pure functions, while staying connected to what customers actually need from the platform.

At Ardoq, we value autonomy and psychological safety. In this role, you won't just follow a script; you will have the influence to shape your domain and the ownership to see your ideas through to execution.

What you'll do

• Own complex systems: Design, build, and improve services across large, sometimes loosely defined areas of the codebase, applying the same rigor to a quick fix as you would to a new capability.
• Pay down technical debt: Identify high-complexity debt before it becomes a customer problem, and architect solutions that keep it from coming back.
• Debug at the system level: Investigate problems that span multiple services and components, and use what you find to prevent them recurring.
• Raise the bar in code review: Give architecture-level feedback that improves not just the pull request in front of you, but the team's coding standards more broadly.
• Mentor and multiply: Share knowledge openly and help other engineers grow their functional programming craft and system thinking.

On a typical day, you will

Start at the REPL, tracing a data-shape mismatch that only shows up under real production load. You'll spend a chunk of the morning in a focused pairing session, working through a gnarly piece of state management with a teammate, favoring the simplest function that solves the problem over the cleverest one. By early afternoon, you're in a design conversation about how a new feature should fit into the existing data model, pushing back constructively when a proposed shortcut would create debt down the line. You close the day reviewing a colleague's pull request with the same care you'd want on your own, leaving feedback that helps them, and the team, get sharper.

Who you are

• The experience: You've built and maintained production systems in Clojure or another functional, JVM-based language, ideally within a high-growth SaaS environment, and you can talk credibly about the trade-offs you made along the way.
• The craft: You think natively in immutable data structures, pure functions, and the REPL-driven workflow that makes Clojure fast to iterate and hard to break. You write code the next person can reason about.
• The problem-solver: You can hold multiple constraints and system behaviors in your head at once, and turn that complexity into a clear, structured recommendation.
• The communicator: You raise technical concerns early, translate complex trade-offs into plain language for the team, and mentor others without making it about being right.

The 'Ardoq way'

• Bold: We continuously raise the bar for ourselves and each other, starting from a place of "what if I could?" We act decisively, even when the information isn't complete, and choose forward motion and learning over waiting for the perfect answer.
• Caring: We care enough to be candid. That means delivering direct, kind, and timely feedback that helps our teammates grow. We operate as one team, sharing knowledge openly, celebrating each other's wins, and putting collective success ahead of individual ones.
• Driven: At Ardoq, everyone has a stake in the outcome, including stock options. We act like owners: measuring success by impact rather than effort, saying "no" to distractions, and staying focused on the highest-value work at pace.

Why Ardoq?

• Employee stock options, share in Ardoq's success as we grow together.
• 25 days annual leave offered globally.
• Enhanced parental leave available globally to support you and your family.
• Retirement and insurance benefits, including travel, health, disability, and life insurance.
• Annual learning budget to support your growth and development.
• A hybrid working policy: 2 to 3 days per week from our Oslo office

Final note

At Ardoq, every teammate has a voice. Whether you love tackling enterprise-scale challenges or improving how companies run, you'll not only belong, you'll impact, grow, and make work meaningful.