At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the development of a cutting-edge platform for urban biodiversity and resilience.
- Company: Join Kew Reach, a pioneering venture with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive salary, flexible remote work, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Be part of a dynamic team focused on sustainability and environmental solutions.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on nature restoration while working with innovative technologies.
- Qualifications: Strong TypeScript skills and experience in AWS infrastructure are essential.
The predicted salary is between 59400 - 72600 £ per year.
Company: Kew Reach
Product: Palette; an urban planning tool for biodiversity and resilience gain
Location: UK-based · remote-first or hybrid options available (where remote first, occasional London / team days are required)
Type: Full-time · permanent
Reports to: CEO
Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience
About Kew Reach
A better future for people and planet, made possible through the power of a thriving and resilient natural world. Launched in 2024, Kew Reach is a joint venture with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, set up to deliver nature-based solutions to restore ecosystems in any setting. We accelerate nature-positive action at scale, grounded in scientific expertise, shaped by creative thinking, and sustained through collaboration.
What We Do
We offer an end-to-end service guided by the Kew Method, spanning baseline assessment, climate-informed design and delivery, species sourcing, long-term monitoring and capacity building, ensuring every project is credible, resilient and delivers measurable nature gain. This spans three Labs: the City Lab, bringing climate-resilient planting and green infrastructure into city and development environments; the Restoration Lab, turning degraded land into resilient, biodiverse ecosystems; and the Infrastructure Lab, delivering nature-based solutions for major capital projects.
Introducing Palette
Our platform, Palette, brings that same scientific confidence to decisions about planting, biodiversity and habitat. Built around our core climate-resilient tree species-selection tools, we're expanding its capabilities to cover pollinator and habitat analysis, combined biodiversity planning, and tools designed for local-authority use.
The role
You will be the engineer who owns the health of the platform and its growth: its security posture, its reliability and deployment pipeline, the day-to-day usability of the application, and the new client-facing capabilities we build in the future. As those capabilities grow, you'll mature the platform from a single application into a suite of tools that you manage centrally. You'll work alongside our Senior Data Scientist and the CEO. This is a founding platform-engineer role: broad, high-ownership, and, for now, the sole engineer on the platform side.
What you'll own
- Product & platform evolution: Grow the platform beyond its first study - turning client needs and our scientific domain expertise into features that help users understand their sites and act on that understanding.
- Security & compliance: Take our launch security checklist from "mostly coded" to "verified and deployed".
- Reliability & operations: Own the AWS infrastructure and keep prod, staging and dev clean and reproducible.
- Usability & frontend quality: Improve the end-user experience: performance, accessibility, responsiveness, error states, and the general polish that makes a paid product feel trustworthy.
- Engineering practice: Uphold our test discipline - every new backend procedure ships with happy-path and error-path tests; the suite stays green on every commit.
Where we are today
You'd be walking into a platform that is already well past prototype: Live product with ~320 species scored across 12 UK regions.
Known open work (a realistic first-quarter backlog, already scoped): deploy the WAF; add CloudFront; finish security headers / CSP; harden sessions; purge and rotate historical secrets; enable CloudTrail/GuardDuty/Config; verify RDS encryption-at-rest and enable rotation safely; run a restore drill; and commission a pre-launch penetration test.
Essential experience
- Strong TypeScript across the stack (Node.js backends and a modern React frontend).
- Solid AWS experience and comfort with infrastructure as code (CDK ideally; Terraform/Pulumi transfers).
- Demonstrable application and cloud security know-how.
- Experience running production web services.
- Relational databases (PostgreSQL) and an ORM.
- A test-first instinct and a bias toward small, reviewable changes.
- Product sense - a track record of building and shipping user-facing features.
Desirable
- tRPC, Drizzle, WorkOS (or similar identity platforms).
- PostGIS / geospatial data.
- Multi-tenant SaaS.
- Frontend accessibility and performance.
- Interactive maps / geospatial UX.
- A genuine interest in the domain - trees, urban greening, biodiversity, climate resilience.
This is not a data-science or modelling role - the scientific data pipeline, species envelopes and suitability methodology are owned by our data engineer. Your focus is the platform and its product: security, stability, usability, and the new capabilities we grow on top.
Senior Software Engineer employer: Greensphere Capital
Greensphere Capital is an excellent employer, offering a flexible home-based role that allows you to thrive in a dynamic tech growth environment. With a strong focus on employee development and collaboration with senior leadership, you will have the opportunity to enhance your skills while contributing to meaningful financial management across multiple entities.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Software Engineer
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Greensphere Capital or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Greensphere Capital.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Greensphere Capital.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Greensphere Capital that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Software Engineer
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Greensphere Capital.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Greensphere Capital and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Greensphere Capital
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Greensphere Capital uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
