Senior Product Developer

About Charlie

At Charlie, Product Developers build the products that help thousands of small businesses make work better. As a Senior Product Developer (IC4), you’ll play a key role in shaping how we build software. You’ll combine deep technical expertise with strong product thinking to solve complex customer problems, improve the quality and maintainability of our platform, and help raise the bar for engineering across the team. You’ll work as part of a cross‑functional squad alongside our Product Managers, while collaborating closely with the wider engineering team to continuously improve our products, platform and ways of working. Come on and join us to make work better!

In this role you will:

• Design, develop and maintain scalable, secure and maintainable Ruby on Rails applications.
• Proactively identify technical improvements, reduce technical debt and improve the long‑term health of our platform.
• Review code, provide thoughtful technical feedback and help maintain high engineering standards.
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers from discovery through to delivery, helping shape technical solutions.
• Identify technical risks and opportunities early, balancing customer value with engineering sustainability.
• Debug complex production issues and continually improve the reliability and performance of our systems.
• Share knowledge through pairing, mentoring and technical discussions, helping other developers grow.
• Champion modern engineering practices, including effective use of AI development tools where they improve productivity and quality.

Requirements you must have:

• Significant commercial experience building modern web applications.
• Strong experience with Ruby, Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL.
• Excellent understanding of software architecture, maintainability and clean code principles.
• Experience reviewing code and providing constructive technical feedback.
• Confidence diagnosing and resolving complex production issues.
• Strong understanding of application security, testing and performance.
• Comfortable collaborating with Product Managers, Designers, Agencies and Engineers throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to explain technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• A collaborative mindset and genuine desire to help others succeed.
• Curiosity and willingness to continually improve your craft, including making effective use of AI‑powered development tools.
• Significant commercial experience developing production software (typically 5+ years, although we care more about capability than time served).

Let us know if you have:

• Experience working with Heroku or similar cloud platforms.
• Experience modernising legacy systems and reducing technical debt.
• Experience improving developer experience, tooling or engineering processes.
• Experience contributing to technical strategy or engineering roadmaps.
• Experience working within cross‑functional product teams in a SaaS environment.

This is a permanent full‑time role. We cannot offer visa sponsorship and you must be able to work in the UK.

The Way We Work

• A team of 39 that genuinely enjoy spending time together, with regular in‑person and remote events to foster connection.
• 9 day fortnights – our adjusted work week. We have every other Friday off work.
• Hybrid‑first approach; we optimise for office and remote working to be valued equally, and to be equally valuable.
• Live anywhere in the UK; we have 8 set days per year that we require the team to be together in our London office, but you have the flexibility to live anywhere in the UK.
• 90 bookable “nomad working” days outside of the UK in any timezone each year.
• An amazing office space in East London’s pet‑friendly Second Home, and membership access to their wider locations.
• “Exploration days” when you can work on whatever across the company.
• We have review cycles 2x a year using our transparent career progression framework.

Compensation Package

• A benchmarked salary is £74,500.
• £750 yearly Work Your Way Budget.
• Access to our Learn You Way L&D Fund.
• £30 monthly wellbeing Budget.
• Private Health Insurance through Vitality.
• 25 days annual leave + public holidays.
• 4 bookable “Personal days” per year.
• A sabbatical of up to one month paid at 50% of salary (after 3.5 years).
• Enhanced Equal Parental Leave policy.

Equal Opportunities Statement

We are an equal opportunity employer and believe in the power of a diverse, inclusive team. We welcome all applications from all suitably qualified people, regardless of race, sex, disability, religion / belief, sexual orientation or age. Please let us know if you require anything which would enable your success throughout our interview process.