Senior Rails Engineer in Leeds

We are an ambitious team incubated and supported by ImpactEd Group. The role would be employed by TEP Services Limited. Our platform has been built from the ground up by a small, skilled development team over the past three years. We are appointing a Senior Rails Engineer at a pivotal moment, joining as a senior individual contributor with strong influence on product planning and the roadmap, owning two products in the TEP ecosystem, and acting as the senior technical reference point for the wider development team.

You will work closely with our fractional CTO and the TEP Director to translate strategic priorities into well-built software, helping us actively embed AI-assisted development practices that we believe will significantly change how our team works over the next two years. Supporting our early- to mid-career developers in their work comes alongside the technical role. We are a small, mission-driven team and this is a high-trust, high-ownership role. The right person will care about the quality of what they build, be genuinely curious about the problems schools and trusts are trying to solve, and be excited about using AI tooling not as a shortcut but as a genuine accelerant for good work.

What you’ll inherit:

• A proven, established codebase.
• Three years of well-considered Ruby on Rails development serving 600 schools across the UK, Australia and the UAE, with active users, real data, and a roadmap shaped by partner feedback.
• A small, capable, agile team alongside you.
• Early-mid career developers learning from your day-to-day practice, with a culture of peer review, pair programming and honest feedback already in place.
• A fractional CTO and an engaged Director.
• A clear AI-first direction.
• Real product ambition.
• A base in Leeds.

Role responsibilities:

This is an individual contributor role, owning two products in the TEP ecosystem with strong influence on product planning and the roadmap, working closely with the TEP Director and our fractional CTO. You will write production code day to day, own architectural decisions across your scope alongside the fractional CTO, and act as the senior technical reference point for the development team.

Platform development:

• Write well-tested, high-quality code using Ruby on Rails and front-end technologies, delivering features, fixing bugs and addressing technical debt.
• Work within our Trello and GitHub workflow and agile ways of working, reviewing code, maintaining pull request quality and upholding a strong peer review culture.
• Take ownership of architectural decisions on the platform, working with the fractional CTO to ensure they are sound, well-reasoned and documented.
• Balance delivery pace with code quality.
• Contribute to the ongoing improvement of our development processes, tooling and ways of working as the team and platform grow.
• Lead on security and platform performance workstreams.
• Use AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code and similar) as a genuine part of your daily working practice, not as an occasional aid.

Product planning:

• Collaborate with the Director and fractional CTO on roadmap prioritisation, balancing new features, fixes, security and technical debt with a clear view of capacity and complexity.
• Translate product priorities into well-scoped, well-estimated technical work, developing cards, running planning sessions and ensuring the team has clarity on what they are building and why.
• Engage in sprint planning and retrospectives, contributing to how we continuously improve our delivery cadence.
• Bring your own perspective on where AI tooling adds value and where it introduces risk.
• Provide the Director with clear, honest technical input on decisions that have a product or strategic dimension.

Problem solving:

• Respond to bug reports, both automated exceptions and human reports, working with the team to diagnose and resolve issues quickly.
• Maintain and improve platform reliability, security, monitoring and incident response processes.

Team development and mentoring:

• Provide day-to-day technical support for the development team, the senior technical reference point for our developers.
• Contribute to strategy and working culture as part of a small, growing organisation.
• Mentor and support the team’s growth through pair programming, code review, structured knowledge sharing and honest feedback.
• Help model and embed AI-first working practices across the team, supporting the developers in building real fluency.

About you:

We are open to a range of backgrounds. The right person will bring strong technical depth, creative problem solving and real enthusiasm for the way emergent technologies and AI are changing how development work gets done. You do not need to have worked in education or edtech before, but you should care about the mission.

What you’ll need:

• 7 years of relevant commercial Ruby experience, with strong Rails experience in production environments.
• A strong instinct for code quality.
• Genuine, practical experience with AI-assisted development tools.
• Comfort working in an evolving, established codebase.
• Familiarity with data pipelines, analytics infrastructure or big data.
• Strong communication skills.

What will set you apart:

• Experience working in Python.
• Experience significantly contributing to a small development team.
• An interest in education, social enterprise or the tech for good context.