Software Engineer

Job description

Oak is a fully remote, mission-driven organisation offering high levels of flexibility, autonomy, and purpose. We're a national not-for-profit organisation working in partnership with teachers to create high-quality, sequenced curriculum and lesson resources for pupils across all subjects and age groups.

Our culture has been independently recognised through:

• Flexa verified (93% overall score, including 95% for working hours and 97% for role modelling)
• Escape the City's Top 1% Employers – based on anonymous colleague reviews of culture, development, and impact
• Investors in People Gold - through external accreditation and colleague feedback

�� About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Software Engineer to join our Product and Engineering team.

Oak engineers have a range of specialities and interests covering web application development, APIs, databases, serverless computing, GraphQL, React, and component-led UI. If you have experience in any of these areas, we'd love to hear from you.

We work together in product squads alongside designers, researchers and education experts, regularly releasing new features and improvements to give teachers and their pupils quick and easy access to the highest quality learning resources.

�� What You'll Be Doing

• Development of highly performant ed-tech applications that are secure, scalable, highly available and accessible to the widest number of users that meet Government Digital Service standards
• Lead the team on specific areas of the system, infrastructure, or code base
• Take an active role in the design and implementation of new processes and tools that improve the user or developer experience
• Provide mentorship for a less experienced colleague
• As a member of the Oak Team, contribute to the planning and culture of the organisation
• Work in cross-functional and product-oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required
• Support all work across Engineering and take on other general responsibilities as required

�� What We're Looking For

• Professional experience building high-performing web applications with modern Javascript libraries and tools.
• Experience collaborating with product teams to develop high-quality products with large customer impact.

• Knowledge of common web application architectures with some experience architecting simple technical solutions based on product requirements and design.

• Experience in extending automated test suites and an understanding of the value of different types of testing (e.g. unit vs integration).

• Desire to build beautiful, easy-to-use digital products with an understanding of the importance of accessibility in all its forms.
• Great communication and collaborative skills.
• The successful candidate will have a desire to contribute in all areas to ensure Oak is successful. You will be comfortable working at pace, with a range of digital systems (including proprietary ones as required) and you will continuously look at ways that the team can keep getting better. You will be excellent at working as part of a remote team, building relationships and managing your time effectively.

�� Our Benefits

• 25 days annual leave, plus one extra day for each year of service (up to 28)
• Additional Oak closure days over Christmas/New Year
• 11% employer pension contribution (with no minimum employee contribution)
• A 36-hour working week, with half-days on Fridays or every other Friday off
• Fully remote working — we'll support your home set-up and offer coworking options if preferred
• Twice-yearly in-person offsites to collaborate, connect, and have fun
• A culture that genuinely supports flexibility, autonomy, and trust

�� Inclusion and Belonging

We believe diverse teams build better products. We warmly welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those who are underrepresented in the tech and education sectors.

We use the Applied recruitment platform to help reduce bias in our hiring process.

�� Key Info

• Location: Remote, but you must be based in the UK with the legal right to work here
• Sponsorship: Unfortunately, we're unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time
• Closing date: We'll be reviewing applications as they come in and may close the role early

If this sounds like the kind of role and team where you could do your life's best work, we'd love to hear from you.

Next steps

You'll answer some questions related to your day-to-day job. Your answers will go through our sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised, and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers (real humans).

If you are shortlisted, we'll invite you to the next stage, which will consist of a remote technical interview and a technical pairing session conducted over Zoom. This will last approximately two hours.

We love giving feedback, so at the end of the application process, we'll share how well you performed.

We aim to begin interviews in November 2025.

We are receiving excellent responses to our job advertisements. This may lead us to close the role early, so if you are considering applying, then please get your application in early to avoid missing out.