Our Data Product squads build and operate the technology that enables us to process and use large volumes of health and research data. As our engineering organisation evolves, we’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer who can help us build scalable, reusable engineering capabilities that can be shared across these teams. 

Day to day work will vary depending on what your focus is at that time, but will include things like: 
 

• Guiding the technical decisions the team makes alongside the squad’s product manager and engineering manager (EM). 
• Represent technology/architecture/engineering in cross-functional project teams throughout a project’s lifecycle (from ideation to implementation). Work within the team to identify optimal solutions for challenges, communicate them outwards to stakeholders and work with others to implement them. 
• Work with the Head of Data Engineering and your peer Staff/Lead Engineers to act as a guiding mind for the engineering/architecture in your business area. Identify areas for improvement and work with other leaders to implement. 
• Lead decision-making on critical technical strategy and implementations which affect your business area. 
• Identify opportunities for and then carry out specific pieces of high-impact hands-on work where it makes sense. 
• Work with partners and suppliers to integrate their systems with Our Future Health’s. 
• Support your colleagues with pairing, peer reviews, coaching, discussion, and other collaborative activities that help everyone reach high standards and result in the delivery of high-quality software products. 
• Participate in live operations support rotations that monitor live systems and quickly and effectively react to potential incidents and provide support to operations teams such as customer support. This could include being part of an out of hours on-call rotation. 
• Anticipate problems that could occur with pipelines and take action to prevent them. Identify and describe problems when they occur and be able to develop solutions that address them for the short and long term.  
• Keep abreast of best practice in software engineering across industry, research and Government, and identify opportunities to bring these into Our Future Health. 

At Our Future Health, we recognise the importance of having a diverse workforce and ensuring that all candidates, regardless of their background, have equitable access to our application process. We proactively encourage applicants who identify as having a disability, neurodiversity, or long-term health conditions to let us know if they require any reasonable adjustments as part of their application process. 

If you do require any reasonable adjustments, please email us at talent@ourfuturehealth.org.uk

We welcome applications from all who may not feel they match the full criteria, so if you have most of the below, we'd like to hear from you:  

Technical Skills 

• You have led the architectural design of systems. 
• Highly proficient in cloud engineering (preferably in Azure; AWS and GCP) 
• Demonstrable knowledge and experience in building solutions centred around moving and processing large amounts of data at pace and scale, using cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, Helm and Docker. Experience with storing, searching and filtering large scale data. 
• Highly proficient working with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible) 
• Highly proficient in Python. Experience in orchestration tools like Dagster, Prefect and Airflow are advantageous. 
• Experience with Spark, Databricks, data lakes/lakehouses. 
• Knowledge of good data modelling and design patterns; in-depth knowledge of relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL) and familiarity other types of data store (blob, document, graph). 
• Highly proficient in modern, agile development practices like code review, TDD, CI/CD and pairing using tools like Git and GitHub. 
• Experience in operationally managing software components/service once live, including:  observability best practises, logging best practises, error reporting, debugging and live incident management. Experience using tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, New Relic etc. 
• Experience of working with sensitive personal data. 
• Experience working with a health data (genetic data, clinical data, NHS data) is advantegeous. In particular, any knowledge and experience of FHIR and health data models (OMOP, PCORnet, i2b2, CDISC) would be advantageous. 

Competencies 

• Experience working in/with cross-functional teams consisting of engineers, product, UX and non-technical stakeholders. 
• Proven ability to communicate with stakeholders and audiences at different levels. 
• Understanding of the importance of operational, security and legal factors when designing solutions, with the ability to articulate trade-offs and make informed decisions around design and technology choices. 
• Experience working in small, growing organisations with a high degree of ambiguity, where flexibility is valued. 
• Strong understanding of software quality principles and practices. 
• Experience in mentoring and coaching less experienced engineers. 
• Comfortable in facilitating technical discussions, encouraging collaboration and providing direction.