Software Engineer in Nottingham

Salary: £45,000 to £58,000 per annum, depending on experience

Location: Nottingham, UK

Details About Us: Founded in 2020, Cerca Magnetics Limited’s (Cerca) goal is to make a real difference to people’s lives through technological advances. Working in partnership with The University of Nottingham and Magnetic Shields Limited, we have commercialised the world’s most advanced wearable functional brain scanner. Our device measures the magnetic fields within the brain using Optically-Pumped Magnetometers (OPMs) and due to its lightweight design can be worn by both adults and children whilst allowing them to move during a scan. Following initial research-market sales, we are now progressing our technology toward release as a regulated medical device and building an ISO 13485-compliant design and development capability.

Description of the role: As a Software Engineer at Cerca, you’ll help build the software that controls and acquires data from our wearable OPM‑MEG scanners. You’ll work at the hardware–software interface in a multidisciplinary team, delivering production-quality software while contributing to a regulated development approach—DHF-ready documentation, risk management, usability considerations, and verification/validation evidence.

Key role focus areas:

• Design, develop and maintain software for our upcoming medical device, owning features from concept through release.
• Write clean, well-structured, well-documented code and support effective peer review.
• Collaborate with hardware and systems engineers to integrate software with our OPM‑MEG systems (control, instrumentation, and data acquisition).
• Plan and execute verification & validation activities: develop tests, run them, analyse results, and produce objective evidence (plans/reports).
• Contribute to Design Controls / DHF artefacts: requirements, traceability, risk controls, release and configuration records.
• Support risk management by identifying software hazards/failure modes, implementing mitigations, and linking them to verification evidence.
• Support usability‑related software aspects (safe workflows, clear error handling/messages) with testable outputs and appropriate documentation.
• Help create and maintain documentation aligned to medical device expectations (e.g., IEC 62304; ISO 13485 environment).
• Provide remote support to software deployed at customer sites, including issue triage and controlled fixes/releases.

Required skills & experience:

• Degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Professional software engineering experience delivering production-quality software (typically 3+ years, or equivalent).
• Strong fundamentals in design, debugging, maintainability, and testability.
• Programming experience in languages such as Object Pascal, Matlab, Python, LabVIEW, C, C++, C# (or similar).
• Comfortable collaborating across disciplines and communicating technical decisions clearly.

Desirable (nice to have):

• Experience in a start‑up, R&D, or fast‑paced product development environment.
• Experience with, or solid understanding of, medical device development and standards (e.g., IEC 62304, ISO 13485), including DHF/design controls.
• Familiarity with risk‑based development (hazards, mitigations, traceability to tests) and usability/human factors concepts as they relate to software.

What you will bring to Cerca:

• Technical Skills: A solid foundation in software development, with an eagerness to learn and apply best practices for medical‑device software.
• Ownership: You deliver not just code, but reliable, supportable software with the evidence to back it up.
• Quality mindset: You value testing, documentation and traceability as part of building safe systems.
• Collaboration: You work well with engineers, scientists and hardware specialists to solve real problems.
• Curiosity & pace: You enjoy learning, improving, and building something genuinely novel and impactful.

In line with the Equality Act 2010, Cerca understand and appreciate the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion, both in work and in life. We therefore actively encourage applications from all backgrounds, as we believe a more diverse team is a more successful team! We look forward to hearing from you.