Staff Engineer, Architect (Researcher Operations) in London

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 will 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’re 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.

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 research 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 will require working with other functions at Our Future Health such as Finance, Customer Support, and we expect it to involve a mixture of bespoke building of select components alongside configuration and integration of SaaS products like CRM, ticketing, support, and email comms systems. Where we build our own components you will work with product development squads to define the design and requirements for the component and then support the squad as they build it.

The researcher onboarding and study application processes are vitally important to Our Future Health since they form our implementation of two principles from the “Five Safes” framework for safe research access to data – “safe people” and “safe projects”.

As well as the responsibilities specific to the researcher operations area, as a member of the Architecture team you will also play a key role in general architecture activities at Our Future Health – working with other engineers to guide the wider platform design, work on cross-platform projects which add new platform-side capabilities, represent technology in the early stages of future projects, and so on.

Day to day work will vary depending on what your focus is at that time, but will include things like:

• Represent technology/architecture/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 outwards to stakeholders and work with others to implement them.
• Work with your peer staff engineers and Head of Engineering to act as a guiding mind for the engineering/architecture in your business area.
• Identify areas for improvement and work with other leaders to implement.
• Lead decision‑making on critical technical strategy and implementations which affect your business area.
• Identify opportunities for and then 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 your 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 where required.

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”, experience of weighing up pros and cons to make a selection which will fit into the wider organisation’s systems and meet the needs of organisational 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 store (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 of working with sensitive personal data.

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 the 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.

Competitive base salary from £105,000.

• Generous Pension Scheme – We invest in your future with employer contributions of up to 12%.
• 30 Days Holiday pro rata + Bank Holidays – Enjoy a generous holiday allowance with the 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 – Get up to 8% off on IKEA and Currys products, spreading the cost 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 – Know someone amazing? Get rewarded for bringing them on board!
• Wellbeing Support – Access to Mental Health First Aiders, plus 24/7 online GP services and an Employee Assistance Programme for you and your family.
• A Great Place to Work – We have a lovely Central London office in Holborn, and offer flexible and remote working arrangements.

Join Us – Let’s prevent disease together.

We recommend you apply as soon as possible as occasionally due to high volumes of applications we need to close our postings early.

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.