Senior Software Engineer

Job description

# **Senior Software Engineer** **Office Location:** Temple, London - hybrid working environment (3 days in office per week) **Experience Level:** +5 years commercial software engineering experience ## **About Investa** Investa is building the UK’s first zero-commission Options and Stocks trading platform. Legacy platforms typically feature high fees and complex interfaces that cut out the majority of retail investors. We are building a streamlined alternative to fix that. So far, we have successfully raised £3.5 million in funding, secured direct regulatory approval from the FCA, and have won two major awards in 2026 so far: Best Options Trading App (Good Money Guide) and Best App for Options Trading (ADVFN). We are currently live on iOS with 1,500 users, launching Android very soon to double our market, as we move toward our next growth targets of 10,000 users, then 100,000 and beyond. Our goal is straightforward: Think Options, Think Investa. We are a lean, agile team where every employee directly shapes the business. We don't have a corporate way of working. Instead, we look for people who want high autonomy, care about making a visible impact, and align with our core values of being Collaborative, Curious, and Creative. ## **The Role** The Investa app was installed over 1,000 times within the first 24 hours of our priority access launch and we’re now looking for a high-impact Senior Software Engineer to join our founding engineering team as we scale. You will have extensive commercial experience designing, building and maintaining systems used in critical services or those handling significant volumes of activity. You will play a crucial role in building key parts of our platform and apps, ensuring the robustness, scalability, and security of our systems. If you’re passionate about building best-in-class products to tackle complex challenges and you excel in a collaborative, fast-paced environment, we want to hear from you. ## **What the role involves** - **Founding Team Ownership:** Designing, building, and maintaining robust, scalable services by joining our founding team of 4 engineers. Working directly with the founders with zero middle-management red tape, you won’t just pull tickets from a backlog - you will actually own your work end-to-end, see your code ship, and see its immediate impact on users. - **Building the Engineering Culture:** Joining our founding engineering team means you are actively building our engineering culture, not just stepping into one. You will have a direct voice in shaping how we collaborate day-to-day, how we learn from each other, and how we preserve a friendly, agile, and tight-knit environment as we grow. - **Full-Stack Versatility & Growth:** Hands-on Building: Writing high-quality, secure code for our FCA-regulated platform. You’ll navigate our stack to ship features that delight users. Driven by our fast-paced environment, you will have the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and get hands-on with the wider technical stack, levelling up your skills significantly faster than in a traditional, highly specialised role. - **System Design & Architectural Influence:** Partnering directly with the CEO and Principal Engineers to tackle complex systems design and actively shape our evolving architecture. Your technical perspective will give you a strong voice in our high-level design choices. You will have true design ownership over the specific services and systems you build, ensuring they remain robust, secure, and performant as we scale. - **Technical Excellence:** Maintaining a high bar for code quality, testing, and documentation. You’ll participate in (and drive) meaningful code reviews. - **System Integrity:** Monitoring and improving system reliability, ensuring our trading platform is always "always-on." - **Production Support:** Root-causing real-time production issues; we all take pride in the stability of what we ship. ## **Your Background** - **Coding:** You are a "doer." You love shipping code, crave the responsibility that comes with joining a founding team, and are comfortable driving tricky engineering problems forward with high autonomy and support from the team. - **Adaptable & Impact-Driven:** Technical Depth: You have +5 years experience in software engineering, specifically building and maintaining production-grade distributed systems. You are a flexible engineer who is excited to jump in wherever the business actually needs you most to solve interesting problems across the board. You are proficient in at least one or two modern languages (Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, etc.) and have experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP). - **Pragmatic Mindset:** You balance structural integrity with contextual relevance, ensuring we don't just build the "perfect" system, but the right system for our current needs. - **Collaborative Spirit:** You enjoy working in a tight-knit team, giving/receiving candid feedback, and contributing to a culture of shared learning. - **First-Principles Thinker:** You don’t just follow patterns; you understand why they exist. You can pick up new technologies or domains (like complex options Greeks) quickly, and you welcome a setup that actively forces you to grow into a much more versatile engineer. ## **On-call** - All engineers at Investa are involved in providing support for our products. This involves responding to events outside of working hours and is a core part of the role of all engineers. ## **What we offer:** **Career Ownership & Impact:** While we provide clear levels to grow into, you also have autonomy over your execution and your career trajectory. Your work impacts the business immediately without corporate red tape. You can choose whether you want to pave a path as a high-level individual contributor or step into management as we scale - you shape your career. **Collaboration & Proximity:** You’ll work directly alongside our Co-Founders, Alec and Ross, and our founding engineers to co-author both the product roadmap and our engineering architecture. Because of our size, our culture is extremely personal. Everyone has firsthand insight into top-level strategy, cross-departmental exposure, and a direct voice in how we solve deep technical issues as we scale. **Creativity & Speed:** We prioritise innovation through speed, agility, thinking outside the box, and resource-efficient solutions. **Shared Success & Equity:** We are in this together. To ensure everyone benefits from our growth, every employee receives meaningful company EMI equity. Our success is your success. **The Package and Perks:** Competitive base salaries, private medical insurance, team socials chosen by you, milestone celebrations, and hybrid flexibility. ## **Compensation and Benefits** ### **Financial Growth 💸** - Base Salary: £85,000 – £105,000 per annum, commensurate with experience. - Equity: Initial grant of 0.1% - 0.25% in stock options. We reward impact with additional performance-based grants and milestone-linked top-ups. - Annual Review: Structured salary and performance reviews conducted every year to ensure your growth stays on track. ### **Health & Wellbeing 🌴🦷** - Annual Leave: 30 days (including bank holidays) + your birthday off. - Premium Coverage: Private medical and dental insurance via Bupa. ### **Office Environment & Lifestyle ☕** - The Office: Work from a vibrant, spacious office featuring a private gym and a rooftop terrace for fresh-air breaks. - Fuel & Socials: Enjoy tea, coffee and snacks daily. Every last Wednesday of the month, we host a Team Lunch where the menu is chosen by you. We also run regular team socials, alongside company and individual milestone celebrations. ### **Tech 💻** - Custom Setup: You’ll receive a high-spec MacBook Pro and £150 toward a mouse and keyboard of your choice. ## **Interview Process** - **Stage 1:** Screening with Talent Lead - **Stage 2:** Technical & Architectural Deep Dive - **Stage 3:** Coding/Systems Design Interview - **Stage 4:** Final Behavioural interview - **Offer** ***Looking at both our Senior and Mid-Level roles?*** *Please choose the single position that best matches your current experience and apply once. Our hiring team cross-reviews all engineering applications, so if the other level turns out to be a better fit, we’ll automatically switch your application.*