Principal Software Engineer (2 fixed-term roles)

Principal Software Engineer (2 fixed-term roles)

Remote (UK-based) | Temporary - 6 months full-time or 3 months part-time (2 days a week) | Salary £104,732 + benefits including 4.5-day week and 11% employer pension

We’re hiring for two fixed-term roles:

• 6 months, full-time (e.g. 32 - 36 hours a week)

• 3 months, part-time (e.g. 16-24 hours a week)

You can apply for one role or both. The responsibilities and what we’re looking for are the same for each.

Both roles need to start by 1 December 2026. We’ll interview as applications come in, so apply early.

Please note: Appointment to these roles is subject to Oak having a partnership agreement with an external organisation being in place. If this doesn't go ahead, we won't be able to appoint and we will let you know.

Do your best work, for the right reasons.

We’re looking for Principal Software Engineers on a temporary basis to help us build beautifully simple, high-impact digital products that support teachers and improve outcomes for pupils across the UK.

Oak is a fully remote, mission-driven organisation offering high levels of flexibility, autonomy, and purpose. We’re a national not-for-profit 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

You'll join our Engineering leadership team to shape the architecture and standards that power Oak's digital platform. Working closely with the Director of Engineering, product managers, and cross-functional squads, you will drive the continuous improvement of secure, scalable, and highly available systems. You'll design new areas of our platform architecture, establish engineering principles that ensure code quality across the team, and stay at the forefront of modern web development practices and AI-assisted workflows.

This is a strategic role with significant scope for technical influence and mentoring, alongside the opportunity to define our engineering culture and practices. You'll be part of a collaborative engineering function that cares deeply about developer experience, accessibility, and building products that genuinely enhance teaching and learning.

🔧 What You’ll Be Doing

• Maintain specialist expertise in software architecture and engineering practice, and be an authority on this across Oak.

• Take an active and exemplary role in the ongoing development of the Oak platform, prioritising support on its most challenging areas as required.

• Responsible for the continuous improvement of highly performant ed-tech applications that are secure, scalable, highly available and accessible to the widest number of users, meeting Government Digital Service standards.

• Design and maintain engineering principles and processes to ensure code quality across the team.

• Lead on designing and implementing new areas of the architecture, working closely with Platform Teams as and when required.

• Prioritise an excellent developer experience, ensuring all applications and architecture are well documented.

• Mentor and coach engineers at every level.

• Contribute to the strategy, planning and model the culture of the organisation.

• Work in cross-functional and product-oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required.

• Deputise for the Head of Engineering and take on other general responsibilities as required.

🌱 What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years holding responsibility for the continuous improvement of digital products and services, with deep expertise in modern web development practices and AI-assisted workflows.

• Extensive knowledge in architecting secure, resilient and accessible B2C internet products, with the ability to facilitate technical decision-making across the engineering function.

• Proven success in designing and implementing business-critical engineering processes and tools that have a measurable impact on delivery quality and velocity.

• Proven ability to create significant value for money when architecting and managing technical solutions, including principled decision-making around cloud costs and build versus buy trade-offs.

• Proven success in communicating technical concepts, including the capabilities, limitations and risks of AI to audiences from engineers to senior leadership.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills, comfortable working independently in a remote team.

• A proactive, growth mindset, keen to help colleagues develop.

💛 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

The successful candidate will have a desire to contribute across all areas to ensure Oak's success. You will be comfortable moving quickly and with agility, and be confident working with a range of digital systems (including proprietary ones, as required). You will continually look for 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.

📖 See how we work

Want to know more about how we build our products? Our Engineering Substack shares how we build AI and data tools for education, including the decisions, trade-offs and lessons we've learned along the way. Read Oak's Engineering Substack - https://engineering.thenational.academy/

🌈 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. 

If you're from an underrepresented group, there's a good chance you're discounting yourself before you've even started. That's more common than you'd think, and it means we may miss out on brilliant people. If you're excited by this role but don't meet every requirement, please apply anyway.

We use the Applied platform to help reduce bias in our hiring process. Answers are anonymised and reviewed by a panel of humans.

📌 Key Info

• Location: Remote, but you must be based in the UK with the legal right to work here

• Sponsorship: We’re unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time

• Contract: Fixed-term, 6 months full-time or 3 months part-time (2 days a week)

• Start date: You must be available to start by 1 December 2026

• Closing date: We’re reviewing applications and interviewing as they come in. We’ll close the advert once we’ve found the right people, so apply 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 a few admin questions and some questions about your day-to-day work. All answers are anonymised, randomised and reviewed by a panel of real people, so it’s your thinking that gets assessed, not your CV.

We’re interviewing on a rolling basis. If you’re shortlisted, we’ll be in touch to arrange a first interview, followed by a final interview. We give everyone feedback at the end of the process.

We are receiving excellent responses to our job advertisements. This may lead us to close the role early, so if you are considering applying, don't leave it too long to avoid missing out.

We are an equal opportunity employer.

We are committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.