Staff Engineer (Architect) - Researcher Operations

About Our Future Health

Our Future Health is an ambitious collaboration between the public, charity and private sectors, designed to help people live healthier lives for longer through better prevention, earlier detection and improved treatment of diseases. We speed up the discovery of new methods of early disease detection, and the evaluation of new diagnostic tools, to help identify and treat diseases early, when outcomes are usually better. With over 2.5M volunteers across the UK, we are now the world's biggest health research programme of its kind, and our volunteer group is also more diverse than other similar health research programmes. Technology and data are central to our mission. Our systems power websites, clinics across the UK, secure analytics and research systems, pipelines that process highly sensitive health and genetic data, and we are continuing to grow our engineering capability to support this ambition.

Role Summary

We are looking for a Staff Engineer (Architect) to own the high‑level design of our researcher operations systems. As Our Future Health moves to expand its researcher offering we need to build and operate new systems related to acquiring researchers, onboarding them, taking them through the study application process, and maintaining our relationship with them. The role requires working with other functions such as Finance and Customer Support, and involves a mixture of bespoke building of select components alongside configuration and integration of SaaS products like CRM, ticketing, support and email communication systems.

Responsibilities

• Represent technology, architecture and engineering in cross‑functional project teams throughout a project's lifecycle (from ideation to implementation).
• Work within the team to identify optimal solutions for challenges, communicate them to stakeholders and collaborate to implement them.
• Work with peer staff engineers and the Head of Engineering to act as a guiding mind for the engineering and architecture in your business area.
• Identify areas for improvement and work with other leaders to implement them.
• Lead decision‑making on critical technical strategy and implementations that affect your business area.
• Identify opportunities for and carry out specific pieces of high‑impact hands‑on work where it makes sense.
• Work with partners and suppliers to integrate their systems with Our Future Health's.
• Support colleagues with pairing, peer reviews, coaching, discussion and other collaborative activities that help everyone reach high standards and result in the delivery of high‑quality software products.
• Contribute to the reliability, resilience and ongoing evolution of critical research platform services and live systems as required.

Qualifications

• You have led the architectural design of systems.
• Experience of configuring and integrating off‑the‑shelf SaaS systems with bespoke web and backend applications, via APIs, event‑driven architectures, etc.
• Appreciation of the balance between “build” and “buy”, and experience weighing pros and cons to make a selection that fits the wider organisation’s systems and meets the needs of internal users and goals.
• Knowledge and experience of building cloud‑hosted consumer web applications and backend services using open‑source technologies such as Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Python in a start‑up or scale‑up environment.
• Prior experience with Azure (ideally), AWS or GCP.
• Comfortable working with Infrastructure as Code, ideally with knowledge of Terraform.
• Knowledge of good data modelling and design patterns; in‑depth knowledge of relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL) and familiarity with other types of data stores (blob, document, graph).
• Expertise in modern, agile development practices like code review, TDD, CI/CD and pairing using tools like Git and GitHub.
• Experience of operationally managing software components once live, including observability, logging, metrics, error reporting, debugging and live incident management.
• Experience working with sensitive personal data.

Competencies

• Experience working in/with cross‑functional teams consisting of engineers, product, UX and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Proven ability to communicate with stakeholders and audiences at different levels.
• Understanding of the importance of operational, security and legal factors when designing solutions, with ability to articulate trade‑offs and make informed decisions around design and technology choices.
• Experience working in small, growing organisations with a high degree of ambiguity, where flexibility is valued.
• Strong understanding of software quality principles and practices.
• Experience in mentoring and coaching less experienced engineers.
• Comfortable facilitating technical discussions, encouraging collaboration and providing direction.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary from £105,000.
• Generous Pension Scheme – employer contributions of up to 12%.
• 30 days holiday pro‑rata plus bank holidays – flexibility to take bank holidays when it suits you.
• Enhanced Parental Leave – supporting you during life’s biggest moments.
• Cycle‑to‑Work Scheme – save 25‑39% on a new bike and accessories through salary sacrifice.
• Home & Tech Savings – up to 8% off on IKEA and Currys products, paid over 12 months through salary sacrifice.
• EV Scheme – save up to 40% on a brand new electric vehicle all‑inclusive package through salary sacrifice.
• £1,000 Employee Referral Bonus – reward for bringing an accomplished candidate on board.
• Well‑being Support – access to Mental Health First Aiders, 24/7 online GP services and an Employee Assistance Programme for you and your family.
• A great place to work – lovely Central London office in Holborn and flexible and remote working arrangements.

Join us – let's prevent disease together. We recommend you apply as soon as possible as we may need to close our postings early due to high volumes of applications. At Our Future Health we recognise the importance of having a diverse workforce and ensuring that all candidates, regardless of their background, have equitable access to our application process. We proactively encourage applicants who identify as having a disability, neurodiversity, or long‑term health conditions to let us know if they require any reasonable adjustments as part of their application process. If you require any reasonable adjustments, please email talent@ourfuturehealth.org.uk.