Senior Fullstack Engineer (Ruby) in Sheffield

About The National College

At The National College, we empower education professionals to transform children’s lives. Our all-in-one platform helps schools, trusts, and nurseries stay compliant, raise standards, and reduce staff workload through intuitive, impactful technology. If educators need it, we build it. We’ve created a unique platform that combines the world’s largest CPD and policy library with innovative software tools, developed in collaboration with thousands of schools and more than 1,000 education experts.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Developer to join the National Education Group team and support the continued growth and evolution of our cloud-based SaaS platform. As a Senior Developer, you will play a key role in the architecture, design, and development of the platform across both front-end and back-end components, working closely with the Lead Developer and the wider engineering team. This is a hands-on, delivery-focused role, responsible for building new features and integrations, resolving technical issues, reviewing code, and helping to drive high standards of quality, performance, scalability, and engineering excellence.

Job Requirements

• Experience
• 5+ years' experience in software development roles.
• Demonstrable experience at a senior level, including ownership of complex features and mentoring or supporting less experienced engineers.
• Proven track record of building and maintaining high-performance web applications, preferably within SaaS or ecommerce environments.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating personal or professional contributions to software projects.
• Skills and Competencies
• Strong experience developing and maintaining Ruby on Rails applications within established, large-scale web platforms.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and services, particularly AWS.
• Experience working within mature, long-lived codebases and evolving systems over time.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices and tools, including CI/CD pipelines and container orchestration technologies such as Kubernetes.
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering principles, development practices, and delivery methodologies.
• Ability to design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable, secure, and maintainable software solutions aligned to business and user needs.
• Experience developing SaaS applications and integrating with external APIs and third-party services.
• Strong knowledge of relational databases and query optimisation, ideally MySQL or Aurora.
• Solid understanding of front-end web technologies, including HTML, CSS/SASS, and JavaScript.
• Ability to implement responsive, multi-device user interfaces from UX/UI designs.
• Practical experience with automated testing frameworks and code quality tools, such as RSpec and RuboCop.
• Experience working within Agile environments using methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban, and tools such as Jira and Git.
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to delivering high-quality solutions.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment.
• Willingness to embrace modern development practices and productivity tools, including AI-assisted development.
• Desirable
• Knowledge of PHP/Laravel.
• Experience with video delivery platforms, learning management systems (LMS), or educational technology products.
• Qualifications
• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Job Responsibilities

• Deliver high-quality software development in Ruby, Rails, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, aligned with product and design priorities.
• Contribute to the implementation of technical architecture, engineering standards, and development best practices.
• Support and mentor other engineers through technical guidance, constructive feedback, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Contribute to decisions around tools, frameworks, and technical approaches, with a focus on scalability, security, maintainability, and performance.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, QA, and Engineering teams to deliver high-quality user experiences.
• Ensure code quality through comprehensive automated testing of new and existing functionality.
• Design, implement, and maintain robust database models and efficient SQL queries.
• Identify and implement improvements to system scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Conduct timely and constructive code reviews, helping to maintain and improve engineering standards.
• Actively participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies, including planning, estimation, and retrospectives.
• Investigate and resolve defects and issues raised by QA, Support, and other stakeholders.
• Contribute ideas and initiatives to enhance product capabilities, engineering processes, and team effectiveness.
• Develop, maintain, and enhance integrations with third-party platforms and APIs, including HubSpot and other cross-product services.

Job Benefits

At The National College, we’re passionate about helping organisations grow and thrive through knowledge and connection. You’ll be part of a business that values its people, supports continuous development, and celebrates success.

• Life assurance
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, shared parental, and adoption pay
• 24/7 online GP access
• Mental health and wellbeing support
• One paid charity day per year
• 25 days’ holiday, increasing to 30 days with service
• Professional study support
• Plus more