Senior Software Engineer

Employment type: Full time
Reporting to: Senior Engineering Manager
Visa sponsorship: UK national or visa holder preferred, but not a dealbreaker
Salary: £85,000 - £100,000
Location / working pattern: Hybrid, London, 2 days a week in the office
Background checks: Due to the non-partisan nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees need to pass background checks, verifying your identity, education (if relevant), work history, sanctions, criminal record, adverse financial history, and right to work. To ensure we maintain high standards of political neutrality, we also perform media and social media checks.

About Apolitical

Apolitical's mission is to make governments smarter to deliver for people and the planet and we reach over 40 million public servants through our partnerships with governments globally. We are the largest global network for governments, used by 500,000+ public servants in 170 countries to find and share best practices and gain skills on critical topics from AI to climate change to emerging technologies.

Governments use Apolitical to solve public sector transformation challenges from AI augmentation to reskilling. We offer governments five interoperable components: research and analysis, workforce productivity tools, customisable training, vibrant learning communities and high impact convenings. Everything we do is powered by our unique global network and real-time data.

The Role

Apolitical is becoming a multi-module, AI-enabled platform for governments. Our priority is to build products that help public servants understand, adopt and make effective use of AI and emerging technologies.

Every one of our products is AI native, built with TypeScript, React and NextJS on the front end and NestJS for back-end services, hosted across multiple cloud platforms. Our engineers work across the stack and close to the problems our users face.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will take ownership of complex features and systems across the front end and back end, from shaping the problem with Product to shipping and checking the impact. Your immediate mandate is to deliver product work for our government partners while making architecture decisions that keep our platform maintainable as it grows.

This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role, with no direct reports, in a team of engineers who share technical direction. You will work closely with Product, Design and fellow engineers, and with government partners where a feature needs it.

You will:

Build product features end to end – design, build and release features across the front end and back end, from the first problem statement to production.
Shape what we build – work with Product, Design and government partners to turn user needs into well-scoped work, challenging assumptions when the evidence points elsewhere.
Design systems and architecture – lead the technical design of complex features and contribute to decisions on our architecture, platform and technology stack.
Build AI into our products – integrate AI capabilities into our products, with the evaluation and safeguards that public sector users need.
Keep our software reliable – test, monitor and maintain what you build in production, and review code and technical designs from other engineers.
Raise engineering standards – mentor other engineers and improve how the team builds software, including how we use AI tools in development.

Onboarding Milestones

Within your first month, you'll:

Understand our products, users and codebase, and ship your first changes to production.
Learn how Product, Design and Engineering plan and prioritise work.
Take ownership of a first feature, agreeing its scope with Product.

Within three months, you'll:

Be delivering features end to end with little direction.
Be contributing to technical design decisions and reviewing code across the team.
Have shaped at least one piece of work from a broad problem statement with Product and Design.

Within six months, you'll:

Have led the technical design of a complex feature or system through to production.
Be a go-to reviewer and mentor for other engineers.
Be improving how the team builds, for example in testing, observability or our use of AI tools.

About you

You will have experience building and maintaining production software across the front end and back end with TypeScript, React and Node.js, in teams where engineers own features and work closely with Product.

You'll thrive here if you:

Ship to learn, releasing small changes early and using what users do to decide what comes next.
Take responsibility rather than wait for permission, making sound decisions with incomplete information.
Finish what you start, then help others finish theirs.
Only merge code you can explain, whether you or an AI tool wrote it.
Balance delivering results now with the longer-term impact of your technical decisions.
Raise the bar for the engineers around you through code review, pairing and constructive challenge.
Are motivated by building technology that helps governments work better for people and the planet.

Show us in your CV if you have:

Experience with NextJS or NestJS in production.
Experience building product features that use large language models or other AI services.
Experience with testing practices such as TDD, acceptance test-driven development or testing in production.

Don't meet every requirement? Studies show that women and people of colour are less likely to apply for roles unless they meet every qualification. We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive team, so if you're interested in the role but don't tick every box, we'd still encourage you to apply.

This probably isn't the role for you if…

You prefer to work from detailed specifications rather than shaping problems with Product and users.
You're seeking a management role rather than hands-on engineering with technical influence.
You'd rather specialise in the front end or the back end than work across the full stack.

Our application process

We use skills-based assessments and structured interviews to focus on what predicts success in the role. Each stage is designed to give us high-quality evidence of your skills, judgement and ways of working, while giving you a clear view of the role, the team and what working at Apolitical is like.

You can see more about the stages of our hiring process on our careers page.

You can expect to hear from us, no matter the outcome, by 16th November 2026.

Using AI in your application

We embrace new technologies and encourage the use of AI in our work.

You're welcome to use AI tools to help structure and refine your application. What matters to us, though, is understanding your thinking, experience and perspective, so please make sure your application still sounds like you.

Senior Software Engineer