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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Senior Software Engineer - **Company:** Oxford Dynamics - **Location:** Oxford, UK - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** £101,525.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Query Performance, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Automation of Tests, Cloud Computing, Code Review, Databases, Continuous Integration, Relational Databases, Software Debugging, DevOps, Github, Python (Programming Language), PostgreSQL, OAuth, Octopus Deploy, OpenID, Performance Tuning, Prometheus, Session Management, Management of Software Versions, Enterprise Data Management, Datadog, Data Logging, Snowflake, Grafana, Palantir Foundry, Indexer, Backend, Rate Limiting, Cloudformation, Fastapi, SC Clearance, Event Driven Architecture, Git Flow, Kubernetes, Machine Learning Operations, Terraform, Data Pipelines, OpenSearch, Docker, Databricks - **Published:** October 27, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5942278219 ## About the Role Security clearance: You must be eligible for UK security clearance (BPSS and SC). We require applicants to hold UK passport and at least 5 years of continuous UK residency. If you are not eligible, we will not be able to progress your application., · Strong hands-on experience with Docker and containerised deployment - building images, debugging containers, and running containerised services in production. · Strong programming ability in Python, or demonstrable depth in a comparable language with a willingness to work primarily in Python. · A track record of building and operating production backend systems at a level where you set the design, not just implemented it. · Proven experience designing and operating production APIs - versioning, security, documentation and automated testing. · Solid grounding in relational database design, indexing, performance tuning and migrations (PostgreSQL or equivalent). · Experience with asynchronous or event-driven architectures and the failure modes that come with them. · Fluency with Git-based workflows and code review as a team practice. Nice to have · Experience integrating with AI/ML systems or model-serving infrastructure. · Exposure to enterprise data platforms (for example Palantir Foundry, Databricks or Snowflake). · Observability tooling (Prometheus/Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch). · Container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS) and infrastructure as code. · Experience in regulated, safety-critical or security-cleared environments. · Prior experience as a technical lead, or as the senior engineer on a small team. How you work · High agency - you own outcomes end to end and pull on threads without being asked. · Pragmatic and research-driven, with a bias to ship and iterate. · A clear communicator, in writing as much as in conversation. · Comfortable defining SLAs, making trade-offs explicit and operating production systems. ## Description This is a senior individual-contributor role with room to grow into staff-level scope. You will own significant parts of our platform end to end - design, build, ship, operate, and you will shape how the wider engineering team works: the architecture we converge on, the standards we hold, and the engineers we grow. We care more about depth of engineering judgment than about any particular stack. Most of our backend is Python, our data lives in PostgreSQL, and everything ships in containers but if you have built serious systems elsewhere and want to work in this stack, we would still like to hear from you. What you will be doing Systems and architecture (primary focus) · Design, build and evolve backend services for high-availability, high-throughput workloads - currently Python and FastAPI, though the principles matter more than the framework. · Own the design of well-versioned HTTP APIs: clear contracts, consistency, idempotency, backward compatibility, and documentation people can actually use. · Design event-driven systems and background processing pipelines (queues, streams, workers) that handle retries, partial failure and back-pressure gracefully. · Model data properly and tune the databases behind it - schema design, indexing, query performance, migrations, and scaling strategy. · Apply caching, rate limiting and queuing to hit explicit performance and latency budgets. · Integrate with AI pipelines and model-serving endpoints, including streaming responses, async inference jobs, and sane error and retry semantics. · Take on the ambiguous problems: the ones where the requirement is a paragraph, the constraints conflict, and someone needs to decide. Security and reliability · Package and ship every service as a clean, minimal Docker container, with reproducible builds and sensible runtime defaults. · Write secure, well-tested code - unit, integration and end-to-end, and raise the bar for others through code review. · Implement authentication and authorisation (OAuth2/OIDC), session management and fine-grained permissions. · Build in observability from the start: structured logging, metrics, tracing and alerting for the services you own. · Support compliance readiness (ISO 27001, GDPR) through secure-by-default design rather than retrofitted controls. · Take part in operating what we build - you should be comfortable being close to production. Technical leadership · Translate product intent into technical plans: milestones, sequencing, measurable success criteria, and honest estimates. · Make trade-offs explicit and write them down, so the team can disagree with the reasoning rather than the conclusion. · Mentor engineers on system design, API ergonomics and operational thinking; grow the people around you. · Communicate clearly with stakeholders of varying technical background, including non-engineers and customers. Infrastructure (welcome, not required) · Contribute to infrastructure as code (Terraform/CloudFormation) and CI/CD (GitHub Actions/Argo CD) alongside the DevOps team. · Support cloud operations with sensible defaults, cost awareness, and clean promotion across dev/staging/prod.