Location
London

Hours
Full Time

Salary
Competitive salary

About the Role
We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help shape and build the shared engineering capabilities that underpin Our Future Health’s data platforms. This role offers a unique opportunity to combine hands-on software engineering with Staff level technical leadership, working on large-scale data systems and reusable tooling while supporting multiple engineering teams to solve complex problems effectively.

Our Future Health is an ambitious collaboration between the public, charity and private sectors, designed to help people live healthier lives for longer through better prevention, earlier detection and improved treatment of diseases. With over 2.7 million volunteers across the UK, we are the world’s largest health research programme of its kind, with a diverse volunteer group.

Technology and data are central to our mission. Our systems power websites, clinics across the UK, secure analytics and research systems, and pipelines that process highly sensitive health and genetic data. We are continuing to grow our engineering capability to support this ambition.

Our Data Product squads build and operate the technology that enables processing and use of large volumes of health and research data. As our engineering organisation evolves, we seek a Staff Software Engineer to build scalable, reusable engineering capabilities shared across teams.

Day-to-day responsibilities include:
- Guiding technical decisions alongside product and engineering managers
- Representing technology and architecture in cross-functional project teams throughout project lifecycles
- Identifying optimal solutions and communicating them to stakeholders
- Collaborating with Head of Data Engineering and peer Staff/Lead Engineers to guide engineering and architecture
- Leading critical technical strategy and implementation decisions
- Performing high-impact hands-on work where appropriate
- Integrating partner and supplier systems with Our Future Health’s platforms
- Supporting colleagues through pairing, peer reviews, coaching and collaboration
- Participating in live operations support rotations, including out-of-hours on-call
- Anticipating and preventing pipeline issues
- Developing short- and long-term solutions to problems
- Keeping abreast of best practices in software engineering and introducing improvements

Experience
- Led architectural design of systems
- Highly proficient in cloud engineering, preferably Azure (AWS and GCP experience also valuable)
- Skilled in building solutions for moving and processing large-scale data using cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, Helm and Docker
- Experience with storing, searching and filtering large-scale data
- Proficient with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform and Ansible
- Highly proficient in Python; experience with orchestration tools such as Dagster, Prefect and Airflow is advantageous
- Experience with Spark, Databricks, and data lakes/lakehouses
- Knowledge of good data modelling and design patterns; strong understanding of relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL) and familiarity with other data stores (blob, document, graph)
- Skilled in modern agile development practices including code review, TDD, CI/CD and pairing using Git and GitHub
- Experience in operational management of live software components, including observability, logging, error reporting, debugging and incident management using tools like Grafana, Prometheus and New Relic
- Experience working with sensitive personal data
- Experience with health data (genetic, clinical, NHS) is advantageous, including knowledge of FHIR and health data models (OMOP, PCORnet, i2b2, CDISC)

About you
- Experience working in cross-functional teams including engineers, product, UX and non-technical stakeholders
- Proven ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders at different levels
- Understanding of operational, security and legal considerations in solution design with ability to articulate trade-offs
- Comfortable working in small, growing organisations with ambiguity and flexibility
- Strong understanding of software quality principles and practices
- Experience mentoring and coaching less experienced engineers
- Skilled at facilitating technical discussions, encouraging collaboration and providing direction
- Pragmatic, collaborative and adaptable with strong technical opinions balanced by flexibility
- Interested in healthcare mission and motivated by supporting health research at scale

Qualifications
We welcome applications from candidates who may not meet every criterion but have most of the skills and experience listed. A passion for engineering quality and continuous improvement is essential.