Senior Software Engineer (AI Tooling)

Role: Senior Software Engineer (AI Tooling)

Team: Agentic Engineering (Claude Rollout)

Location: Hub Based - Hybrid for all

Salary banding: £55,000 - £85,000

Experience: Expert

Working pattern: Full-Time

Reporting to: Delivery & Growth Lead

Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

This role in 3 words: Build, Collaborate, Deliver

Top 3 qualities for this role: Communication, Delivery Expertise, Amplification

Where you’ll work: Depending on the needs of your business area, we expect hub based people to be in the office at least once a week, and to go to OVO Connection events in-person. You’ll be assigned to the closest one of our three hub offices, Bristol, Glasgow, or London; unless your role requires field-based work. Each hub has accessible spaces to park your laptop, is designed to inspire people, help them connect and bring big ideas to life.

Everyone belongs at OVO: At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity’s biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all abilities, gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences, and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet: Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen.

This role in a nutshell: You will lead technical initiatives, make critical design decisions, and mentor engineers to elevate the team’s capabilities. Your expertise will be the driving force that ensures we build scalable, high‑quality software that pushes our company forward. This role involves building an elegant, scalable, and secure AI tooling ecosystem for all the engineering teams at OVO. Your role is pivotal in shaping the architecture of our Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, security controls, and plugin ecosystem. This is an opportunity to solve complex challenges, develop practical agentic tooling being used at an enterprise scale, and deliver work that truly matters to our internal developers.

Your key outcomes will be:

• Technical Leadership & Architecture: Drive the architectural vision for key features, designing robust, scalable systems and contributing to the technical roadmap to influence the future direction of the product.
• Engineering Excellence & Quality: Champion best practices by writing clean, efficient code, leading rigorous code reviews, and implementing comprehensive automated testing to ensure high‑quality, performant tooling in an exciting new field.
• Mentorship & Team Growth: Lead and mentor other engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and collaboration through knowledge sharing, technical discussions, and constructive feedback.
• Project Execution & Delivery: Translate complex projects into clear, executable tasks within an Agile framework, proactively resolving blockers to ensure the timely and efficient delivery of team commitments.
• Community & Knowledge Sharing: Actively contribute to the wider engineering community by leading discussions, sharing expertise through documentation and workshops, and driving the exchange of best practices.

You’ll be a successful Senior Software Engineer at OVO if you have:

• Professional Experience: Significant hands‑on experience developing software in an agile environment, with a proven track record of delivering high‑quality, clean code.
• Backend & Architecture: Expertise in designing and building scalable microservices‑based architectures using languages like Node.js, Python, and TypeScript.
• AI Tooling & Ecosystems: Proven experience or a strong understanding of AI development tools (like Claude Code), Model Context Protocol (MCP), LLM integration, and prompt engineering.
• Cloud & DevOps: Hands‑on experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern CI/CD practices.
• Frontend Development: Proficiency in modern frontend frameworks such as React.js and/or React Native.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and mentor other engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence.
• Collaboration & Problem‑Solving: Excellent communication and analytical skills, with the ability to thrive in a high‑ownership, collaborative team environment.

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you: We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero‑carbon mission. You’ll be eligible for an on‑target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal. We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO, and there’s Flex Pay. We’ll give you 9% Flex Pay on top of your salary – 4% of this is auto enlisted into your pension, and the remaining 5% is yours to use as you like with flexible benefits, including our green benefits, add to your pension or even take it as cash.

Here’s a taster of what’s on offer:

• For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).
• For your health: Benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more.
• For your wellbeing: Gym membership, travel insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, dental insurance, and more.
• For your lifestyle: Extra holiday buying, discount dining, home & tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give‑as‑you‑earn donations.
• For your home: Get up to £400 towards any OVO Energy plan, plus great discounts on solar, smart thermostats, and EV chargers.
• For your commute: Nab a great deal on ultra‑low emission car leasing, plus our cycle‑to‑work scheme and public transport season ticket loans.
• For your belonging: To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people – so when you join OVO, you can play a part – big or small – with any of the Networks. It’s up to you.

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.