Senior Software Engineer in London - Yoto

About Yoto

Yoto is a screen-free interactive audio platform for kids. We make carefully connected audio players that kids control, with no microphones, cameras or ads. We have a catalogue of audio that inspires creative play and learning with 1,000+ titles in our card store from top creators, publishers and labels - think LEGO, Disney, Marvel, Roald Dahl and Sony. We also create Yoto Originals.

We’re on a mission to be the soundtrack of childhood, and help families on their own unique adventures. By creating products that inspire independent play, we help families discover and grow with an inspiring world of audio.

Yoto's Platform Team

We’re a team at the heart of the Yoto ecosystem. We work in a mature, high-trust async environment with a lot of independence. Everyone is able to contribute ideas and be part of decisions. We solve a broad range of problems – from research and development of new products, features or content formats to maintaining a fleet of hundreds of thousands of devices and delivering TBs of audio.

What you’ll be doing:

• Work in a remote, asynchronous-first environment. Co-locating (typically at our London, King’s Cross office) at least once a month.
• Work using managed, serverless services in AWS (Lambda, IoT/MQTT, API Gateway, MongoDB Atlas, DynamoDb, S3).
• Code using a Node.JS stack – mainly TypeScript, with some JavaScript and React, in an automated test-first environment.
• Work closely with product managers, engineers, and other key stakeholders to plan, execute, and deliver the next generation of our purchasing infrastructure.
• Manage the tech you are co-responsible for – addressing cost, inconsistency, operational debt and code debt.
• Design and implement reusable, highly performant solutions that can rapidly scale up and down to handle our peak loads.
• Work in an environment that values software consistency and documentation-first development as core principles.
• Keep a high engineering standard by applying and teaching key principles such as consistency, single responsibility, the scout rule, and least privilege.

What you’ll bring:

• Expert knowledge of TypeScript or JavaScript (ES6 and ESM) and applying code craft and test-first coding.
• Hands on experience designing and building REST (or GraphQL) APIs.
• Good understanding of NoSQL (and SQL) DBs.
• Good experience and understanding of AWS services, in particular APIs backed by Lambda.
• High autonomy and accountability, with good presence for knowing when to collaborate or seek help.
• Proven experience designing and implementing scalable, cost efficient, and secure solutions.

Salary: £70,000 - £88,000 based on experience.

What you can expect from us:

• Hybrid working with a choice based approach – we would love you to come into the office as much as possible, with a minimum of once or twice a month.
• Generous share options – so you’re invested in Yoto’s success.
• A Work from Anywhere policy that gives you the opportunity to work from a different location for a temporary period.
• 25 days’ holiday per year, plus bank holidays.
• Extra leave for service – 1 extra day for every year worked after you hit your 2 year anniversary, up to a maximum of 5 extra days.
• Life Assurance cover (3 x your salary) from day one.
• Income Protection (long term sickness cover of 75% of your salary for up to 2 years) from day one and company sick pay that increases with length of service.
• Enhanced parental leave policy.
• Personal Learnerbly development budget of £200 per year (awarded after successful completion of your probation).
• Your own Yoto player and starter pack of cards!
• 2x volunteer days a year.
• A collaborative tech-focused creative environment.
• Company socials and celebrations, including our annual YotoFest!

Equity and Diversity

At Yoto, our mission is to be the soundtrack of childhood, and help families on their own unique adventures. Our success is rooted in unwavering commitment to our core principles—Kids in Control, Helping Families, Building with Empathy, Embrace Difference, and Playfully Inquisitive.

At Yoto, flexible working and autonomy are key to us. We support working parents because we know that life and work need to work together. And just as we share audio content from a diverse community of creators, we also strive to build a diverse and inclusive team.