Senior Software Engineer

Job Title: Senior Software Engineer

Salary: £51,400- £68,800

Location: Cambridge/ Hybrid (40-60% office-based)

Contract: Permanent

Hours: 35 hours per week

Are you a hands-on senior engineer who enjoys building reliable, impactful services - and helping others grow along the way?

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Assessment APIs team. You'll play a key role in designing, building, and improving APIs that underpin assessment services used across our organisation, including services that integrate machine learning models.

About The Role

As a Senior Software Engineer in the Assessment APIs team, you'll take a hands-on role across the full software development lifecycle for a critical internal platform.

Working closely with the Team Lead and the Applied AI team, you'll help shape the technical direction of the service, translate business needs into robust technical solutions, and ensure our APIs remain secure, scalable and highly reliable in production.

You'll also provide technical leadership within the team, mentoring engineers and line managing 1-2 direct reports, acting as deputy for the Team Lead when needed.

Key Responsibilities Include

• Owning the end-to-end design, development, testing and maintenance of API services.
• Contributing to the ongoing improvement and evolution of a live, production-critical platform.
• Implementing and integrating machine learning models and emerging AI technologies.
• Ensuring solutions meet performance, scalability, security and quality standards.
• Participating in code reviews and promoting best practice and high-quality engineering.
• Identifying and mitigating technical risks and vulnerabilities.

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• Troubleshooting issues, including participation in on-call rotations and out-of-hours support.
• Mentoring and technically guiding other engineers.
• Collaborating across teams, including Applied AI and API client development teams.
• Supporting knowledge sharing, planning sessions and retrospectives.
  
  

This position has been classified as a hybrid role, requiring the selected candidate to typically spend 40-60% of their time collaborating and connecting face-to-face at their dedicated location. Aside from our hybrid principles, other flexible working requests will be considered from the first day of employment, including other work arrangements should you require adjustments due to a disability or long-term health condition.

About You

You'll bring strong hands-on engineering experience and enjoy balancing technical delivery with mentoring and collaboration.

Essential Requirements

• Significant experience in software engineering, gained through formal study, hands-on experience, or a combination of both.
• Proven experience building, deploying and supporting API services in a production environment.
• Strong programming experience, particularly with Clojure and Python.
• Solid understanding of cloud-based infrastructure, especially AWS (e.g. S3, RDS, ECS).
• Experience working in agile delivery environments.
• A track record of mentoring and supporting other engineers.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
  
  

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If you meet the above minimum requirements, we encourage you to apply. Your application will be even stronger if you can also demonstrate the following desirable criteria

Desirable Criteria

• Experience integrating machine learning or AI-driven components into production systems.
• Experience supporting technology transition or knowledge transfer from external partners.
• Exposure to large-scale, business-critical platforms and services.
  
  

For a detailed job description, please refer to the link at the bottom of the advert on our careers site.

We are a Disability Confident (DC) employer that is committed to equality and inclusion ensuring our recruitment process is accessible to all. The DC scheme's Offer of an Interview commitment applies to applicants who opt in, and disclose a disability or a long-term health condition, and best meet the minimum criteria for the role. In instances where interviewing all qualifying candidates is not practicable, we prioritise those who best meet the minimum criteria, as we would for applicants who do not have a disability or long-term health condition.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov.uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.

Rewards And Benefits

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package, featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes
  
  

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Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We aim to support candidates by making our interview process clear and transparent. The closing date for all applications will be 29 th April 2026. We will review applications on an ongoing basis, and shortlisted candidates can expect interviews to take place shortly after it closes.

If you are shortlisted and progressed through the stages, you can expect:

• Screening call via Teams.
• Code review exercise, conducted via Teams.
• Solution architecture exercise, conducted via Teams.
• Panel interview with existing engineers, conducted via Teams.
  
  

If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process due to a disability or a long-term health condition, there will be an opportunity for you to inform us via the online application form. We will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

We are committed to an equitable recruitment process. As such, applications must be submitted via our official online application procedure. Please refrain from sending your CV directly to our recruiters. If you experience technical difficulties or require additional support with submitting your online application, contact the Recruiter.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You will belong to a collaborative team that is exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe - for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it is safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.

Documents

• TAPI Senior Software Engineer Job Description.pdf (118.29 KB)