Software Development Engineer

Software Development Engineer
Hounslow (Hybrid - 50% of the time on site)
12 Month Contract
Up to £430 p/d Umbrella Rate - Inside IR35

Would you like your code to sit inside the software that gets aircraft away on time? This Software Development Engineer contract is with a team building mission-critical airline operations software, from load optimisation and weight and balance to regulatory-compliant load sheets.

Today the team works mainly in Java microservices with a TypeScript and Angular front end, but engineers move between languages as projects change, so we are looking for engineers who think in systems rather than in one stack. You'll work with Product Managers, Technical Business Analysts, Architects and Quality Engineers in Agile product teams. Kafka, MQ and REST connect a set of products running on Azure and Kubernetes, and AI-assisted engineering tools such as Copilot and Claude Code are used from day one. 12 months, hybrid, with half your time on site in Hounslow.

What You'll Be Doing

• Owning problems end to end in a product team, from shaping the solution through to deployment and production support
• Designing scalable, secure, maintainable services and front-end features aligned with product and architectural goals, weighing the trade-offs and recording why you made each choice
• Building APIs, integrations and messaging between interconnected products using REST, Kafka and MQ
• Using AI-assisted engineering tools every day, and reviewing, correcting or rejecting their code, tests and designs against security, performance and operational standards
• Writing automated tests and validation to support quality, reliability and continuous delivery
• Owning CI/CD for your team's services, deploying containers to Kubernetes on Azure
• Taking part in peer reviews, technical design discussions and architecture reviews
• Investigating defects, finding root causes and supporting deployment, monitoring and troubleshooting

What You'll Bring

• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or a related field, plus 3+ years in software development within Agile product teams (5+ years preferred)
• Strong commercial experience in Java or a comparable language, plus production experience in at least one other, for example TypeScript, Kotlin, Python, Go or C#
• Comfortable working across back end and front end (TypeScript and Angular are the current front-end stack)
• A track record of designing systems and explaining your choices: the alternatives you rejected and what you would do differently now
• A good understanding of REST APIs and messaging, ideally Kafka or MQ, plus distributed systems and architecture principles
• Experience with automated testing, source control, CI/CD and containers, ideally Kubernetes and Azure
• Daily use of AI-assisted engineering tools, and the judgement to challenge what they produce

Desirable: experience in a product company, airline or airport operations (flight operations, weight and balance, load control, baggage or ramp), mission-critical, safety-critical or regulated systems, event-driven or service-oriented architectures, observability, monitoring or SRE, SQL, AI-DLC practices, AI-powered or agentic software

Apply today with your CV for this Software Development Engineer contract and we'll be in touch.

This role may suit candidates who have held roles including: Software Engineer, Backend Engineer, Platform Engineer, Full Stack Engineer, Lead Software Engineer, Principal Engineer, Technical Lead, Java Engineer, Kotlin Engineer, Python Engineer, TypeScript Engineer, Integration Engineer

Deerfoot Recruitment Solutions Ltd is a leading independent tech recruitment consultancy in the UK. For every CV sent to clients, we donate £1 to The Born Free Foundation. We are a Climate Action Workforce in partnership with Ecologi. If this role isn't right for you, explore our referral reward program with payouts at interview and placement milestones. Visit our website for details. Deerfoot Recruitment Solutions Ltd acts as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.