Senior Frontend Engineer in Harwell

Company Overview

Metrea delivers effects-as-a-service to national security partners across five domains and more than a dozen mission areas—including airborne ISR, electronic warfare, secure communications, aerial refueling, special mission aviation, aerial firefighting, and advanced simulation. Wherever we operate, we build vertically integrated full stacks of capability—designing, building, and operating turnkey solutions that let customers scale capacity while benefiting from continuous cycles of innovation. With operators and engineers under one roof, we close the gap between lab and field—what we call connecting design with effect. Metrea’s solutions are built for elegance: effective, efficient, and evolving. This approach enables our partners to do more with less and achieve outsized, asymmetric advantage against rapidly evolving threats. Headquartered in Washington, DC, Metrea has facilities across the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and beyond.

The Digital and Synthetic Capability Unit (D&S) is committed to providing mission‑driven information solutions that seamlessly bridge the digital and physical realms. Leveraging cutting‑edge technologies and advanced platforms, we empower operational readiness and elevate situational awareness across diverse domains—including air, maritime, and space.

Position Summary

Metrea is seeking a dynamic and highly motivated individual to join our software development team, building software solutions that provide geospatial data processing and visualisations.

Role And Responsibilities

• Lead the development of product features, ensuring appropriate engineering decisions are made to factor in technical debt, systems design, stability/reliability, monitoring/observability and business need.
• Lead refactoring of complex systems or problems when it is warranted.
• Making pragmatic trade‑offs between perfection and technical debt which align to the business priorities.
• Lead the design process for complex technical problems or new product features.
• Debug and resolve complex software issues at speed.
• Collaborate closely with your teammates, including being a significant contributor to code reviews, promoting good practices which will improve accessibility, performance, stability, security and overall quality of the code.
• Regularly mentor other less experienced engineers and help with on‑boarding new engineers to your team.
• Communicate clearly and articulately the risk of technical problems to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Collaborate regularly and effectively with product, engineering and UI Design to ensure we maintain our delivery against the product roadmap.

Skills And Experience

• HND or BSc level qualification in Software Engineering or equivalent Computer Science related discipline.
• 3+ years of demonstrable experience in an active software development role, developing web‑based applications.
• Strong understanding and practical experience of web development using JavaScript Frameworks e.g. React/Angular.
• Understanding and experience of team delivery in an Agile software development environment.
• Drive to learn constantly and further your knowledge.
• Strong organisational skills, proactive approach to task delivery and required documentation.
• Great interpersonal skills, able to confidently communicate and articulate technical issues to non‑technical team members.

Additional Experience

• Experience working on geospatial visualisation products.
• Experience of developing with C#.
• Experience using Kafka and/or Kubernetes within a service‑based architecture.
• Experience working with relational and/or non‑relational databases.

Benefits

• Private Medical Insurance
• Subsided gym membership / plans through Wellhub
• Electric Car scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Salary sacrificed pension scheme
• Free lunch on office days
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• 30 days annual PTO plus b/h
• Bonus Scheme
• Personal development opportunities

Right to Work

The employee will have the legal right to work in the UK and will be able to produce right to work documentation. Employee must be a UK citizen. Employee must be able to have and maintain a SC Clearance as a minimum.

Equal Opportunities Statement

Metrea Mission Data Limited is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or other characteristics protected by law.

Position Type and Expected Hours of Work

This is a full‑time non‑exempt position with typical working hours of Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Hours and work shifts may change in accordance with department and business needs. Exempt Employees must have the ability to be on‑call and available, as business needs require. Non‑Exempt employees may be required to work over 40 hours per week with approval from the department manager.

Work Location

Harwell, Oxfordshire. This role requires the employee to be hybrid, with 3 days per week working from the office in Harwell.

Work Environment

This job operates in an office setting.

Travel

This role may require occasional travel to other Metrea offices.

Our Firmware

At Metrea, our single core value, Rooted in Humility, and our four cornerstone attributes—Entrepreneurial, Systematic, Discerning, and Over‑Deliver. These form what we call our Teammate Firmware. Just like technical firmware connects software and hardware, our Firmware is the constant interface between our mission and our people. It defines how we show up, how we work together, and how we solve complex problems. Our team Firmware creates a web‑like, hyper‑collaborative, dynamically hierarchical way of working that helps us adapt quickly, communicate openly, and distribute decision‑making to where expertise actually lives. It enables groups to self‑organize around hard problems, shift fluidly as priorities evolve, and operate with the trust, curiosity, and discipline required in a complex mission space. This foundation allows us to deliver elegant, effective solutions and uphold our purpose: protecting our precious inheritance.