Senior Software Engineer (Perl)

Senior Software Engineer Soutron | Fully Remote | Full-time About Soutron Soutron builds specialist information, library, and archive management software used by corporate, legal, government, and research organizations around the world. Our platform helps teams curate, discover, and unlock the value of their most important knowledge assets — from legal precedent libraries to corporate archives to specialist research collections. We are a small, focused team that ships modern SaaS for a sector that has historically been under-served by technology. With new investment behind the business, we are modernizing the platform, expanding the product, and investing in the engineering team that will carry us into the next decade. About the Role Soutron Global is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to be a key technical contributor on a mature, cloud-hosted SaaS library management platform serving 1,000+ public and K-12 school libraries across the United States. This is a rare opportunity to work hands-on with a stable, battle-tested codebase and a loyal customer base, and to help shape its technical direction over the coming years. You will report to the Director of Engineering and serve as a senior individual contributor and technical area owner for the platform — driving day-to-day development, contributing to infrastructure improvements, and partnering with the Director of Engineering on the modernization of the stack over time. You will work closely with the existing development team and benefit from a thorough, structured onboarding program. This is not a greenfield role. The right candidate is someone who is energized by going deep on a proven system, improving it methodically, and integrating seamlessly into an established engineering team — not someone who wants to rewrite everything from scratch. What You'll Do Codebase ownership — senior developer and technical area owner for the platform and ancillary projects, working alongside the Director of Engineering on architecture decisions Releases and deployments — working within Soutron's established release process; understanding the current manual release cycle across 8 production servers and proposing improvements toward automated, pipeline-driven deployments Infrastructure awareness — not directly responsible for server administration, but expected to have working knowledge of the infrastructure stack (Debian Linux, Nginx, Apache/mod_perl, MariaDB/Galera, Solr, PowerDNS, Let's Encrypt) and to proactively identify and propose improvements to existing infrastructure patterns Engineering process adoption — adopting Soutron's established SDLC, Agile Scrum methodology, Bitbucket-based CI/CD pipelines, and code review practices across the acquired team Mentorship & engineering culture — share knowledge with peers, help raise the team's technical standards, and contribute to code review and engineering best practices Security and compliance — dependency scanning, penetration testing coordination, MFA rollout, SOC 2 readiness roadmap Platform modernization — progressively evolving the stack toward modern patterns (REST API layer, frontend modernization, containerization) without disrupting a live production system What You'll Bring These are the core skills we're looking for. You don't need deep expertise in every item — if you're strong in most of them and motivated to grow in the rest, we want to talk. Perl (essential) — 5+ years of production Perl development; must be comfortable with mod_perl, CPAN module management, Template Toolkit, and navigating large, long-lived Perl codebases; experience modernizing or refactoring legacy Perl is a strong advantage Apache Solr (essential) — 3+ years of hands-on Solr experience for search and indexing; understanding of index configuration, query tuning, and cluster management via Zookeeper; Elasticsearch experience considered in addition to, not instead of, Solr Infrastructure knowledge — solid understanding of Linux-based server environments (Debian/Ubuntu, Nginx, Apache, SSH, SSL/TLS); able to read, assess, and propose improvements to infrastructure configuration without necessarily owning day-to-day administration Relational databases — MariaDB or MySQL; understanding of clustering and replication (Galera experience a plus) Full-stack web development — understanding of how server-rendered HTML applications work end-to-end; JavaScript (jQuery era and modern) Agile Scrum — proven experience working within an established Agile Scrum methodology; comfortable with sprint planning, standups, story pointing, and sprint reviews SDLC practices — experience working within a formal software development lifecycle including code review, branching strategy, CI/CD pipelines, and QA gates DevOps fundamentals — CI/CD pipeline setup, branching strategies, automated testing, deployment scripting Security awareness — understanding of common web vulnerabilities (XSS, SQL injection, CSRF), CVE scanning, dependency management Communication and documentation — ability to produce clear technical documentation; comfortable working with non-technical stakeholders Nice to Have (Not Required) Experience inheriting and stabilizing a legacy production codebase Background in library technology, cataloging, or information management — familiarity with MARC, Z39.50, SIP/SIP2, ILL, or OPAC concepts is a plus but not required; a willingness to learn the domain is what matters Experience with Elasticsearch in addition to Solr Go or Python experience (for ancillary tooling and future development) REST API design and implementation Atlassian suite — Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence Containerization — Docker, Kubernetes (for future infrastructure evolution) How We Work Remote-first. The team is fully distributed. We default to async, keep meetings purposeful, and trust people to manage their own time. Small team, real ownership. You won't be lost in a layer of process. Your work ships, and you get credit for it. Pragmatic, not dogmatic. We pick tools and patterns that fit the problem. We're modernizing — but we respect the systems our customers depend on today. Learning is part of the job. We set aside time for reading, experimentation, and genuine skill growth, not just shipping. What We Offer Competitive salary benchmarked to your market and experience. Fully remote working with flexible hours. Generous paid time off and public holiday allowance. Budget for learning, conferences, books, and equipment. Meaningful work on a product that real customers rely on every day. The chance to help shape the engineering culture of a growing, investor-backed business. How to Apply Send us your CV along with a short note — a paragraph is fine — about a project you're proud of and why this role is interesting to you. A polished cover letter is not required; we care about clear thinking, not formatting. We'd rather hear from you and decide together than have you disqualify yourself. If you meet most of the "What You'll Bring" section and the role sounds like you, please apply. Equal Opportunity Soutron is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from everyone, regardless of age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, neurodiversity, caregiving status, or background. If there are adjustments we can make to our interview process to work better for you, please let us know — we're happy to accommodate.