Full Stack Software Engineer

The main codebase is a Ruby on Rails backend (Rails 7, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq), talking to a React Native / Expo (TypeScript) app that runs on the restaurant tablets, with Stripe for payments and a few services around the edges. Rails is where most of the work lives and ideally where you're strongest - but this is a full-stack role and you'd be hands-on across all of it. It doesn't have to be Ruby to start: a strong engineer from another background who's keen to pick it up is just as welcome.

What you'll work on

A broad mix - you'd move across it depending on what needs doing:

• Checkout and payments. Getting the tablet, the card reader and the backend to agree, and keeping the money side correct.

• The POS experience. How staff take orders on the tablet, across the modes it runs in.

• Menus and ordering. Keeping content accurate and in sync across devices.

• Reliability. Smoothing the rough edges so service keeps moving.

• Improving the codebase. Better tests, cleaner code and fewer surprises, in small reviewable steps.

Your first 90 days

We'd start you small - get set up, ship a modest, well-tested fix, and follow an order from the tablet through to the backend. From there you'd take on a real piece of the checkout or POS work and test it on an actual device in one of our restaurants. By the end of the quarter you'd be picking up loosely-defined problems and driving them to a tidy, tested fix on your own.

Around two years of commercial experience. We care more about how you work than the exact number on your CV. This is a full-stack role - you don't need to know every layer on day one, but you should be happy working across all of it. What we'd want to see:

• Commercial experience shipping web apps. Rails ideally (we run Rails 7 / Ruby 3.2), but a strong engineer from another stack who wants to go deep in Rails works too.

• Comfortable on the frontend. A modern typed JavaScript / TypeScript UI - React or React Native is ideal.

• Solid fundamentals. PostgreSQL and building or consuming JSON APIs.

• Good habits. You write tests and work in small, reviewable pull requests.

Care about doing things properly and you'll fit. Anything below is a bonus, not a bar.

Strong plus

• Stripe or other payments work. Handy, given where a lot of the work sits.

• React Native / Expo. The tablet app is Expo; prior experience gets you going faster.

• Background jobs with Sidekiq. Comfort with retries and idempotency.

• Improving established codebases. Making things better without rewriting the world.

Interview process

Three straightforward conversations - no take-home, no timed exercise - with a clear answer after each:

1. Intro call (30 min). The role, the team, and the basics: London-based, right to work in the UK, happy to be on-site in central London on a hybrid basis.

2. Technical chat (60 min). We go through real work you've done - something you built or fixed, how you approached it, and how you'd tackle the kind of problems we're facing. A conversation, not a test.

3. Final chat (45 min). Meet the team, see the setup, and cover how we work, compensation and next steps.

£45,000-£60,000 per year, depending on experience and how much of the stack you can already own. We're happy to talk it through openly at offer stage.

This is a hybrid London role with some regular on-site time in the centre - partly because the job involves testing on real hardware in the restaurants. We're happy to discuss reasonable adjustments.

You'd own real features across the software that runs REEF's UK restaurants - from the tablet on the counter to the backend behind it. It's a lean team with a lot on, so you'd work across the whole stack and see your code live in a restaurant within days, not quarters. About REEF and this role REEF builds and runs the technology behind real restaurants. You'd join a small UK team looking after the ordering and point-of-sale platform for sites you can walk into today - Buns & Buns in Covent Garden and Café Robuchon near Green Park. Small team, plenty to do: you'd own meaningful parts of the product rather than a narrow slice, and there's no shortage of interesting work. The feedback loop is short. Your code goes through a simulator and staging, then straight to a tablet running in a live restaurant - often somewhere you can watch it being used. It's an established product with room to improve, and you'd have real latitude to make it better as you go.