Software Developer (messaging)

We enable people to move easily and safely around our world. Zipabout is designing the future of transport where each journey is personalised. We partner with transport leaders, government and event organisations to provide a better, safer personalised journey experience for all.

At the core of our offering is a cloud‑based messaging platform, built from the ground up, that reliably delivers millions of messages to bus and rail passengers every day. We are already integrated with some of the world's largest messaging platforms, including Messenger and WhatsApp, and we are now looking for a mid‑senior level software engineer – ideally with some experience of working on event‑driven and/or messaging platforms – to help us take the platform to the next level.

You will be working closely with our lead front‑end/back‑end developers and product team to drive the development of our core messaging services, providing millions of bus and rail users with a rich real‑time messaging experience every day.

You:

• Resilience, scalability and quality all go without saying in everything you do!
• You’ve probably been working as part of a team on an enterprise‑level platform for a while, and fancy a challenge with greater responsibility and plenty of room to grow.
• We are unable to offer interviews to developers with less than 3‑5 years commercial experience.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the product team and senior developers to help build and operate our AWS‑based transportation messaging platform.
• Take ownership of, migrate and extend existing and new event‑driven processes into modern architectures.
• Fix issues, make enhancements and solve challenging problems by developing new code and integrating existing Zipabout or 3rd party libraries and API services.
• Developing unit and integration tests to ensure our complex systems work as expected and match required behaviour.
• Contributing to the clear documentation of new processes and improvements to existing documentation.
• Creating automated alerts/alarms/dashboards for our critical operational systems.

Qualifications:

• At least 3 years commercial experience with Amazon Web Services (Lambda, API Gateway, Kinesis, DynamoDB, Cloudformation/SAM essential).
• Modern architectural design patterns, particularly event‑driven and microservice based architectures.
• Experience with source control (Git preferred), continuous integration, and unit/integration testing and issue management software (Jira ideally).
• Object‑oriented and functional programming concepts.
• Containerisation (docker experience preferable).
• Experience with 3rd party messaging APIs such as Messenger, Twilio, and the WhatsApp Business API.
• Solid knowledge of Scala (or a background in Java if no direct experience of Scala).
• NoSQL database design (understanding of Graph concepts a bonus!) with solid knowledge of SQL/MySQL beneficial.
• Familiarity with RESTful API design concepts.

Additional Information:

We are a fast‑paced company, committed to growing a formidable business. We will do so by delivering exceptional value to our clients and developing new and innovative ways for our tech to grow.

You are a good fit for the Zipabout culture if you:

• Are a self‑starter and are excited (and not daunted) about joining a rapidly growing scale‑up business.
• Enjoy change. We’re about innovation – we don’t stand still!
• Are a self‑learner and a passionate tinkerer – you like to try new things and are comfortable paving the way forwards.
• Have a product mindset – we are a product company, not a services company.
• Want to be part of a team.

Benefits:

• We reward with competitive salaries and regular reviews.
• Share options scheme for all staff – you will own a meaningful part of the business.
• Flexible working so that you can plan your workday around your commitments.
• We invest in your development with both personal professional and vocational development budgets.
• Generous holiday allowance because we know that downtime feeds creativity and productivity.
• A real work/life, family friendly balance - we don’t want you working the weekends.
• No micro‑management!
• Exposure to many aspects of the business and the opportunity to rapidly grow your career in your own direction.
• Fab newly fitted out office in the heart of Leamington Spa.
• Flexible location (office/WFH hybrid).
• Free mental health support through Mindful Employer Plus.
• Cultural and active lifestyle contributions for a healthy mind and body.
• Sabbatical scheme – just send us a postcard.
• Regular team socials but no ‘forced fun’.

Diversity:

To help with our diversity efforts, we believe in fighting unconscious bias. We believe that actions speak louder than words and so we have decided to anonymise all CVs we receive. No name, no picture, no nationality or sex, no university or hobbies, no age or references. When your CV is being assessed by our team we only ever consider one thing: your skills. Once you’re shortlisted, we’ll share everything we can about you with our interview panel, and we’ll want to speak to you ASAP to know everything that’s not on your CV, the rest of you.

Location: This role can be carried out in the UK or from Lithuania (Vilnius). It will involve regular travel from the UK/Lithuania. Applicants based outside these countries cannot be considered.