Department: Technology
Location: Home based, UK (with occasional travel to London office)
Reports to: Engineering Manager
Hours: 37.5 per week
Salary: Depending on experience

Role Overview

This is a significant new role. We are building a product engineering capability that did not previously exist at Cambridge Spark: engineers who own business outcomes, not just feature backlogs, and who work directly with stakeholders to understand problems rather than waiting for specifications to arrive.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be an early member of a new Engineering Pod: these are small, autonomous teams responsible for the quality, usability, and impact of EDUKATE.ai for the people learning through it and the teams supporting them. You will work across the full stack, from understanding what your pod’s stakeholders actually need, through to shipping and iterating on the solutions you help shape. You will be a multiplier for the engineers around you: raising the bar on how the team thinks about problems, not just how it solves them.

This role reports to one of our Engineering Managers, and you will initially join our Employer Experience pod. You will carry seniority in a team that we're deliberately rebuilding around product ownership and outcome focus.

Key Responsibilities

Own end-to-end delivery within your pod: from discovery and problem framing through to production, iteration, and outcome measurement
Work directly with internal stakeholders — curriculum, operations, delivery — to understand problems at their root, not just their surface symptoms
Shape solutions collaboratively: contribute to proposals, decision records, and discovery conversations, not just pull requests
Bring an AI-first approach to your work: use AI tooling actively in prototyping, agentic coding, and accelerating delivery — and help the wider team develop the same habits
Hold a high engineering standard across your pod: TDD, code review discipline, and a genuine commitment to quality are non-negotiable here
Coach and support less experienced engineers in your pod, sharing your experience of what good looks like
Contribute to the evolution of our engineering practices as the pod model matures

Candidate Specification

Technical

Full-stack capability, or a strong skew in one direction with genuine competence in the other — we are not hiring pure specialists
Comfort owning the full delivery lifecycle: solution design, production, and iteration
Strong engineering fundamentals: test-driven development, code review culture, and a demonstrable commitment to quality
Active engagement with AI-assisted development: prototyping, agentic coding, and using AI tooling as an accelerant rather than a novelty
Experience with EdTech, regulated industries, or other complex domains is a plus; the ability to absorb a new domain quickly is essential
Nice-to-have:
- Professional experience in our stack (Python / React / Vue) is a bonus, but not essential
- Proven experience building, deploying, and maintaining AI systems in a production environment — you have taken AI capabilities beyond prototypes to reliable, monitored production services that real users depend on

Stakeholder and Communication

Strong written communication: you can write a clear proposal, a concise technical decision record, or a stakeholder update that lands without needing translation
Comfortable contributing to discovery conversations, not just delivering code once the brief is written

Ways of Working

Outcome ownership over feature delivery. You question whether the proposed solution is the right one, not just whether you can build it.
Comfortable with ambiguity. Small pods mean limited process overhead. You make good decisions with incomplete information and know when to escalate versus when to proceed.
AI-first mindset. You are not just curious about AI; you actively use it, prototype with it, and bring that practice into the team around you.
Collaboration without ego. You care about the outcome more than the credit. You build trust through competence and consistency, not volume.
Communicative. You surface problems early, document your thinking, and keep stakeholders appropriately informed without being prompted.

What This Role Is Not

It is not a ticket-completion role: if you want a well-defined backlog and a clear brief every sprint, this probably is not the right fit
It is not a people management role: you will not have direct reports, though you will be a senior presence in your pod and expected to act like one
It is not a big-company environment: we are a bootstrapped edtech business

Department: TechnologyLocation: Home based, UK (with occasional travel to London office) Reports to: Engineering Manager Hours: 37.5 per week Salary: Depending on experience

Senior Software Engineer at Cambridge Spark