Senior / Founding Software Engineer

Role School Data Works is looking for a Senior / Founding Engineer to take technical ownership of a new pupil evidence and decision platform. We expect the role initially to be contract-based while the product is developed and validated , with a clear opportunity to move into a permanent senior engineering role, as the product gains traction. This is not a short-term freelance build or a role for someone who wants to receive a finished specification and implement tickets. We are looking for someone who could become the long-term technical owner of the product and who has already had substantial responsibility for a real production system. You would work directly with the founder through Discovery, help shape the product and architecture, build the first production version, and establish the technical foundations for the platform. Responsibilities You would be the first senior technical hire into School Data Works and would take day-to-day ownership of the technical direction. That would include: - working closely with the founder through product and technical Discovery; - deciding the initial architecture and technology choices; - building and operating the first production-quality version; - designing the core data model around evidence, provenance, professional judgement and version history; - ingesting and transforming data from APIs, spreadsheets, documents and other source systems; - resolving pupil identity across imperfect datasets; - designing granular role-, school- and caseload-based permissions; - building human review and approval into AI-assisted workflows; - establishing appropriate engineering, security, testing, monitoring and deployment practices; - making pragmatic decisions about what to build now and what to defer; - ensuring the product is maintainable as it moves from pilot to wider use; and - helping define and build the future engineering team. The first version needs to be technically sound, secure and operable in production, but this is still a zero-to-one product. We are explicitly looking for someone who knows when to build robust foundations and when not to over-engineer. Some of the technical problems You are likely to work across: - integration-heavy application development; - messy and inconsistent source data; - identity resolution across multiple systems; - relational data modelling; - provenance and audibility; - document parsing and structured extraction; - applied AI with human review; - highly sensitive personal data; - granular access control; - multi-school / multi-tenant architecture; - cloud infrastructure, deployment and monitoring; and - evolving a one-school pilot into a maintainable production platform. We are deliberately not prescribing a technology stack at this stage. Our current hypothesis is a conventional, maintainable web architecture using ordinary and replaceable components. We want the person joining us to challenge that thinking where appropriate and be able to explain the trade-offs behind their choices. Who we are looking for We are looking for an exceptional, pragmatic engineer who is comfortable taking significant technical ownership. You will have: - strong software engineering fundamentals; - substantial personal ownership of at least one production software product or platform; - experience taking systems into production and supporting them with real users and real data; - experience working across backend, data and application architecture; - strong judgement around databases, APIs and systems integration; - experience with cloud infrastructure, deployment, monitoring and production operations; - experience designing secure and maintainable systems rather than only contributing within an established architecture; - the ability to work effectively while requirements are still forming; - strong product instincts and a willingness to understand users and workflows before building; - the ability to explain technical trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders; and - high standards around security, maintainability and data protection. This should not be your first experience owning a production system. We will want to understand in detail what you have previously built, the architecture you chose, how it evolved, what went wrong in production and what you learned from operating it. Experience in some of the following would be particularly useful: - early-stage or zero-to-one product development; - data platforms or analytics products; - multi-tenant SaaS; - complex permissions or role-based access control; - AI / LLM-enabled product features; - document extraction or unstructured data; - data integrations involving imperfect external systems; - education, health, social care or other regulated environments; and - systems containing sensitive personal data. You do not need prior education-sector experience. How we want to work Discovery is still underway, so the exact product scope will evolve. We expect the Engineer to be comfortable with a short build-test-learn cycle: understand the workflow, inspect the actual data, build something useful, put it in front of users, learn, and iterate. We care more about technical judgement, speed of learning and ownership than about using any particular framework or following a heavyweight development process. Why this role is different This is an opportunity to join at the point where both the product and its technical foundations are being shaped. You would have substantial influence over: - architecture; - engineering standards and culture; - product decisions; - the use of AI; - data and security standards; - infrastructure and operational practices; and - future engineering hires. For the right person, we expect the package to include a strong salary plus meaningful equity/options. Location and working pattern UK based. We are flexible on working arrangements, but expect regular direct collaboration and some time with schools and stakeholders where useful. Interested? Please apply through LinkedIn or contact Josh Nieboer at josh@schooldataworks.com with: - a short introduction; - your LinkedIn profile or CV; - links to anything you have built or can talk us through; and - a few lines on why this particular role interests you. We are especially interested in hearing from people who have built something from zero and then operated it successfully in production, and who can explain the decisions and trade-offs they made along the way.