Staff Software Engineer - Product Fundamentals

Multiverse is the upskilling platform for AI and Tech adoption.

We have partnered with 1,500+ companies to deliver a new kind of learning that's transforming today’s workforce.

Our upskilling apprenticeships are designed for people of any age and career stage to build critical AI, data, and tech skills. Our learners have driven $2bn+ ROI for their employers, using the skills they’ve learned to improve productivity and measurable performance.

In June 2022, we announced a $220 million Series D funding round co-led by StepStone Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst. With a post-money valuation of $1.7bn, the round makes us the UK’s first EdTech unicorn.

But we aren’t stopping there. With a strong operational footprint and 800+ employees, we have ambitious plans to continue scaling. We’re building a world where tech skills unlock people’s potential and output.
Join Multiverse and power our mission to equip the workforce to win in the AI era.

This is an opportunity to join the engineering team at Multiverse, the UK’s first edtech unicorn, where you will directly impact the lives of thousands of people by equipping the workforce to win in an AI era. You will do more than just use AI tools; you will architect the systems that allow us to deploy AI-powered features at scale.

This role thrives at the intersection of Will Larson’s Tech Lead and Architect archetypes, acting as a force multiplier who guides direction across multiple teams. You will move beyond individual feature delivery to own complex, cross-functional problems, ensuring that as we scale our AI capabilities, we guarantee stability, security, and architectural integrity. If you are motivated by resolving ambiguous engineering challenges and leading decision-making in critical situations while still keeping your hands in the code as well, this is the place for you.

We have three core Groups. This role sits within the Product Fundamentals Group, but will have lots of collaboration with the teams across the department:

• Learning Product Group: Mission meets market. You will own the full learner journey from application to graduation. You’ll build seamless experiences that prove the ROI of programmes to the world’s biggest employers.

• Product Fundamentals Group (your future Group!): The connective tissue. You will build the shared capabilities that power our ecosystem - from our LMS and our AI guide (Atlas) to the live video sessions where coaching happens and more.

• Foundations Group: Scale and velocity. You will build the "paved road" for our internal tech organisation. You’ll focus on Developer Experience (DevEx), infrastructure, and core services that enable us to reach our ambitious growth goals.

• Audit and Alignment (Months 1-3): You will apply deep technical knowledge to understand our stack (TypeScript, Python, AWS) and current AI constraints. You will begin guiding technical direction by partnering with Product and Engineering leadership to shape a technical roadmap that aligns with business objectives. As part of this on-boarding, you dive deep into one or more of our on-going initiatives, learning about our systems by actually working on them.

• Strategic Execution (Months 4-6+): You will lead one or more highly complex projects to help radically accelerate our AI experiential roadmap. You will demonstrate predictable delivery, ensure that these new systems are well-tested, maintain a high bar on operational excellence, and deliver an impactful user experience.

• Framework Definition (Months 6-12): You will lead defining frameworks and guide architectural strategy across our teams. Success looks like the creation of a "tight sense of engineering at Multiverse" where you have coached others to handle complex intersections of business and technology, effectively delegating execution while maintaining quality standards.

You will operate as a "Strategic Driver," balancing code contributions with high-level enablement.

• Solving Ambiguity: Functioning as a Tech Lead, you will resolve ambiguous engineering challenges. You will act thoughtfully and decisively in critical situations, seeking diverse perspectives and encouraging productive debate even when decisions are unpopular.

• Architectural Strategy: Functioning as an Architect, you will drive the design and implementation plan for major new platforms. You will ensure our AI systems are not just experimental, but reliable and performant for the customer, minimising outages and ensuring a cohesive product experience.

• Cross-Team Leadership: You will coordinate the delivery of broader initiatives that span multiple work-streams. This includes "organisational wrangling" to ensure that the technical debt and scalability strategies you define are adopted by adjacent teams.

• Innovation & Tooling: You will leverage emerging tech (like AI) to solve problems that competitor products cannot address. You will explore and prototype with tools like Cursor or Gemini, but your focus will be on hardening these into foundational components that the rest of the engineering organisation can build upon.

• TypeScript is our primary language of choice for both frontend development (with ReactJS) and on the backend, running inside containers.

• We also have a fair few older services written in either Python or Elixir on the backend. We manage all our infrastructure using Terraform and mostly host on AWS.

• You’ll find tools like GitHub, CircleCI, Datadog, and Backstage as daily drivers for our engineers.

• We also make heavy usage of Cursor and other AI-powered tools to accelerate our ability to deliver outcomes.

• Group & Teams: Each team will have 4-6 Engineers and a Product Manager and Engineering Manager. There will also be Product Designers & User Researchers who typically work across teams. We then collect domain-related Teams into a Group. Groups typically have 4 - 6 Teams. In this Staff Engineer role, you’ll be operating across the Teams within the Product Fundamentals Group rather than being dedicated to a single Team.

• Your Support System: You report to an Engineering Director who is invested in your growth. You are not an island; you are part of a supportive community of Staff+ Engineers and Engineering Managers who collaborate regularly.

• Autonomy vs. Alignment: We reject micro-management. We provide the strategic objectives, but you and your team define how to get there.

• Our Vibe: We value kindness, candor, and curiosity. We prioritise a culture of support, facilitation, and deep care over hierarchy.

Benefits

• Time off - 27 days holiday, plus 5 additional days off: 1 life event day, 2 volunteer days, 2 company-wide wellbeing days (M-Powered Weekend) and 8 bank holidays per year

• Health & Wellness- private medical Insurance with Bupa, a medical cashback scheme, life insurance, gym membership & wellness resources through Wellhub and access to Spill - all in one mental health support

• Hybrid work offering - for most roles we collaborate in the office three days per week with the exception of Coaches and Instructors who collaborate in the office once a month

• Work-from-anywhere scheme - you'll have the opportunity to work from anywhere, up to 10 days per year

• Space to connect: Beyond the desk, we make time for weekly catch-ups, seasonal celebrations, and have a kitchen that’s always stocked!

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We’re an equal opportunities employer. And proud of it. Every applicant and employee is afforded the same opportunities regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. This will never change. Read our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion policy here.

Our Commitment to Safeguarding

Multiverse is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our learners. We expect all employees to share this commitment and adhere to our Safeguarding Policy, our Prevent Policy and all other Multiverse company policies. Successful applicants will be required to undertake at least a Basic check via the Disclosure Barring Service (DBS).

For roles that will involve a Regulated Activity, successful applicants must also undergo an Enhanced DBS check, including a Children’s Barred List check and a Prohibition Order check. Roles involving Regulated Activity may interact with vulnerable groups, therefore are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 meaning applicants are required to declare any convictions, cautions, reprimands, and final warnings.

Providing false information is an offence and could result in the application being rejected or summary dismissal if the applicant has been selected, and possible referral to the police and the DBS.