Location
Reading, King’s Road, United Kingdom

Hours
Full Time

Salary
Negotiable

About the Role
As a Senior Software Engineer in Kantar's Digital Twins Division, you will help build the systems behind one of Kantar’s most ambitious AI products. Your work will enable thousands of AI-driven “digital twins” to simulate real-world consumer behaviour in real time, providing brands with powerful insights into complex decisions. This role focuses on scalable backend systems, event-driven architectures, and AI-enabled platforms. You will collaborate closely with product, data science, and platform teams to transform advanced AI capabilities into reliable, production-ready systems that directly shape how clients interact with data and insights at scale. Your responsibilities include designing and building scalable, distributed backend services for AI-driven applications, developing event-driven systems that process large volumes of behavioural data in real time, creating services in Node.js/TypeScript and/or Python, designing APIs for high-throughput, low-latency workloads, and helping to orchestrate and optimise AI agent-based systems running at scale. Additionally, you will contribute to technical direction, mentor team members, and continuously improve platform development and operations.

Why this job is important
At Kantar, we go beyond the obvious, using intelligence, passion, and creativity to inspire new thinking and shape the world we live in. Join us to start a career that is out of the ordinary and be part of a diverse, inclusive environment where mental health and wellbeing are valued.

Benefits
Flexible hybrid working
25 days leave plus 2 days paid volunteering and life event leave
Competitive salary and bonus (bonus dependent on role)
Company pension
Enhanced parental leave
Healthcare options
Wide range of flexible benefits

Additional Information
Kantar is the world’s leading data, insights, and consulting company, combining human understanding with advanced technologies to help organisations succeed and grow. We are committed to equality of opportunity and creating a fair, supportive working environment where everyone can flourish. Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship or relocation support for this role. Ensure you have the right to work in the country before applying.

Experience
- Strong backend engineering experience with cloud-based systems (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
- Experience designing distributed or event-driven architectures (Kafka or similar)
- Proficiency in TypeScript/Node.js and/or Python
- Experience building scalable APIs and microservices
- Working knowledge of containers and cloud-native delivery approaches
- Curiosity about AI-enabled systems and responsible scaling
- Experience with LLMs, AI agent orchestration, or tools such as RAG, vector databases, or LangChain is a bonus but not essential

About you
Motivated to work in a collaborative environment, eager to contribute to technical direction and mentor others. You are passionate about building scalable, reliable systems and continuously improving platform operations. You value diversity, inclusion, and mental wellbeing in the workplace.

Qualifications
No specific qualifications are mandated, but a strong background in software engineering and cloud technologies is expected to succeed in this role.