Staff Engineer in Cambridge

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based educational charity with the mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. Our products achieve this mission by providing high-quality learning experiences, online and for free, that engage and inspire young people to explore computing and digital making outside of school.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead and set an example for our engineering teams. As a staff engineer you will take on the technical leadership of our products and services, setting an example for your team to follow and sharing best practices in all technical domains. You will have impact across multiple teams as you set standards and ways of working, making important technical decisions on projects and services that will directly impact hundreds of thousands of users. You’ll be an expert in at least one technical domain, and engineers across the organisation will consult you for advice. You’ll be given the space to take a long-term view in your technical decisions, and will spend time working on improving the team processes, practices, tools and ways of working, working on your team, as well as in your team.

We strive to make the Foundation a place where talented people who care about our mission can do the best work of their careers. We have a flexible and collaborative approach to all aspects of our work. If you're the right person for the job, we'll make it work for you, and you can be confident that you'll be working with an exceptional team.

Your Responsibilities

• Act as technical lead on the foundation's various projects and services.
• Write code that serves as an example of best practice in security, accessibility, performance and robustness to the rest of your team.
• Propose and implement architectural solutions to solve the Foundation's technical challenges, building highly scalable and robust web applications and systems.
• Set an example for the members of your delivery team and across the engineering organisation, leading by example through code reviews, writing secure and scalable code, and by following a test-driven approach.
• Share your knowledge proactively through the mentoring and coaching of senior engineers.
• Accelerate delivery teams and projects through finding practical solutions to blocking technical issues and defining an effective development process.
• Be accountable for the quality of the code for your team, with ownership of the technical aspects and architecture of key projects.
• Continuously improve quality in your work and support others to do the same, providing technical and architectural support to other delivery teams.
• Define and own the technical operations of your team's products and services.
• Articulate technical decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders, with a clear focus on user needs and business value.

Experience And Personal Attributes

We recognise that everyone has the potential for growth, and we welcome applications from candidates who can demonstrate that they have some, but not all, of the experience and personal attributes listed here. We also welcome applicants from non-traditional backgrounds, such as those returning to work, leaving military service, or having recently changed careers.

You will have a significant focus on continuous improvement, proactively acting on opportunities to improve the technology, toolings and ways of working around you. You will have worked directly with non-technical stakeholders, gathering requirements and coordinating with other teams. You have experience leading other engineers and implementing best engineering practices in an Agile Environment.

Requirements

• Experience developing engineering talent through mentoring and coaching.
• Led complex technical delivery projects in an Agile environment.
• In depth knowledge of Ruby on Rails, Node.js/Express or front end web frameworks (such as React) and significant experience with RDBMS (such as PostgreSQL).
• Deep technical expertise and excellent troubleshooting and debugging skills, including in debugging opaque distributed system issues without clear causal chains.
• Experience optimising the performance of distributed systems, including instrumenting services for performance metrics, monitoring performance and using the insights gained to design performant systems.
• A track record of implementing proactive security tooling techniques, measures and practices.
• A proven track record of architecting and managing infrastructure on platforms such as Heroku, Cloudflare, and AWS, using tools and services such as Terraform and CircleCI.
• Experience collaborating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders to gather requirements and define elegant technical solutions.
• An in-depth knowledge of engineering patterns and standards.
• Experience writing documentation for a variety of technical and non-technical audiences, including specifications, architecture proposals, Request for Experience appropriately communicating technology decisions to a variety of stakeholders.
• Experience disseminating Agile ways of working and best practices across teams and organisations.

About Us

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based educational charity with the mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. Established in 2008 and first known for our product — the wildly successful Raspberry Pi computer — the Foundation has developed education programmes, learning experiences, and products that are helping millions of young people learn vital new knowledge and skills.

Through Code Club, we support the world's largest network of free informal computing clubs for young people. Tens of thousands of educators have taken our online courses, and millions of people use our free online learning resources. To deepen our understanding of how young people learn about computing and how to create with digital technologies, we conduct academic research, and we use that knowledge to increase the impact of our work and advance the field of computing education.

Across all of our work, we work hard to engage young people who come from backgrounds that are traditionally underrepresented in the field of computing or who experience educational disadvantage. We work all over the world, with teams based in the UK, Ireland, North America, and India, and partnerships with mission‑aligned organisations in over 40 countries. We are at the forefront of the global movement to help young people learn about computing and digital making.

Benefits

• 25 days' annual leave initially, growing to 30 days after five years service.
• Company-wide close down for 3 days at the end of the year.
• Generous company pension scheme with 8% employer and 4% employee contributions.
• Private healthcare.
• Life assurance and long-term illness insurance policy.
• Investment in professional development and learning.
• Flexible work hours as needed, to fit around childcare or other commitments.
• Generous family leave policy.
• Cycle-to-work scheme and season ticket loan.

Timeframe

Close date: 1st of September 2026. Start of phone screens: Week commencing 1st of September 2026. Start of round 1 interviews: Week commencing 7th of September 2026. Start of round 2 interviews: Week commencing 14th of September 2026.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people, and we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. If successful in the selection process, you will be required to undergo a background check to confirm that you are a suitable person to work with children. Further background checks will be made at regular intervals thereafter.