Senior Software Engineer - Application Engineering

About uMed

uMed is on a mission to reduce barriers to knowledge creation in healthcare. Our clinical research network connects patients, electronic health data, and research groups, spanning 400+ GP sites across the UK and growing internationally. We're a focused team of people who care deeply about making medical research faster and more accessible. If that mission resonates with you, we'd love to hear from you.

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Application Engineering team, a hands-on builder who takes real ownership of what they ship. You'll work end-to-end on features and initiatives, from design through to production, collaborating closely with our Data Engineering team who own the health data pipelines that power our platform.

This is a dynamic, broad-reaching role for someone who thrives with autonomy. You'll be expected to lead initiatives technically, scoping, designing, building, and iterating, in a team where every contribution matters.

What you'll be doing

• Building and improving features across the platform, with Python and Django at the core of our stack, while picking up other technologies as the platform and your work demands
• Writing well-structured, testable, production-ready code and holding yourself to a high standard of quality
• Collaborating with Data Engineering to understand platform capabilities and integrate effectively
• Working closely with Product and Design in scrum ceremonies, backlog refinement, and technical discussions, contributing your perspective, not just your code
• Participating in production support and incident management, debugging and resolving issues to keep our platform stable and performant
• Documenting what you build, clearly and consistently
• Helping define and evolve our backend engineering standards, staying current with the Python and Django ecosystem and bringing good ideas back to the team

Requirements

What we're looking for

Essential:

• Strong Python and Django skills (or comparable Python web framework experience)
• Solid grasp of REST API design and SQL database modelling
• Comfort with relational databases and a good instinct for data modelling
• Solid experience with AWS, including containers and serverless technologies
• Working knowledge of message queuing and stream processing
• Experience with observability and CI/CD tooling such as Sentry, Datadog, or CircleCI
• A track record of delivering well-designed backend features end-to-end, independently
• Degree in computing or equivalent experience - we care more about what you've built than where you studied

Nice to have:

• Experience with React and JavaScript/TypeScript
• Experience working with or alongside data engineering workflows, including tools like Airflow
• Experience with clinical or healthcare systems

Who you are:

• A self-starter who doesn't wait to be told what to do next
• Genuinely care about code quality, reusability, maintainability, and scalability
• Excited by working in a small team where you wear several hats
• Someone who empathises with users and keeps their needs at the centre of every technical decision
• Motivated by the idea that the software you create could directly improve patient outcomes

Benefits

• Private Health Insurance to keep you covered
• Pension Plan to help you secure your future
• Plenty of Paid Time Off for your well-deserved breaks
• Work From Home equipment budget for a comfortable working space
• Flexible Benefits platform tailored to your needs
• Enjoy your Birthday Day Off on us!
• Eye-test vouchers for Specsavers to look after your eyesight
• Coworking policy – catch up with the team as regularly as once a week