Bilborough College
Full Stack Engineer
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Full Stack Engineer
About BFMAT
We’re not the finished article and neither are you, so let’s make getting better as enjoyable as possible.
What follows is shaped by how we came into being as a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT).
This was never the traditional model of an “outstanding school” establishing a MAT and replicating its model for other, “less successful” schools. Instead, it emerged from three Midlands-based sixth form colleges joining forces with a university known for innovation—collectively inventing a new collaborative learning framework.
None of us had all the answers at the outset. And today, we still struggle with some of the things we try to do. But we realised early on that success required putting egos aside and committing to a deliberately developmental approach. Management speak? Unapologetically embraced, because it sits at the core of our ethos.
As a Deliberately Developmental Organisation (DDO), we operate on the principle that personal development and organisational success are interdependent. We believe that when people are supported—helped to grow both technical skills (e.g. refining teaching practices) and personal competencies (e.g. emotional intelligence, self-awareness)—then the organisation disproportionately gains.
Candour, trusted feedback, and cultural transparency free us from hiding perceived imperfections. Problems are solved upfront, blind spots are exposed, and we prioritise collaborative support regardless of hierarchical levels. This eliminates the mental load of masking development gaps and reinforces a peer-to-peer ethos of constructive challenge.
Our Challenges (and Some Wins)
- Counter to comfortable orthodoxy: Staff can default to reductive, external accountability metrics for defining success—measures that may not reflect real, long-term learner or organisational growth. We too are reckoning with this.
- Re-defining “achievement”: Most students gauge success by performance benchmarks (grades). But our work no longer conforms to the old model where education means scoring well. Instead, we aim to equip everyone with lifelong skillsets and adaptability—capacity for resilience and creativity.
- Moving away from irrationality: Annual appraisals based on arbitrary targets are gone. Now we focus on regular, meaningful development conversations, ensuring progress aligns with strategy and individual capacity.
- Wellbeing-first: Student and staff voice shape decision-making. Peer-coaching models and self-managing teams (allowing autonomy) are becoming central priorities—alongside technology that fosters actively engaged learning and effortless administrative visibility.
- Re-imagining professional life: We’re exploring how to safely reduce staff workload and gradually roll towards a four-day week (remote-first with in-person collaboration scheduled).
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Failure will happen. We’re neither perfect nor fertile yet—but strong teams invite ideas and digest mistakes into better systems. If you thrive in these conditions, we’d love you here.
The Product Role
“Commit to a product—outputs, quality, growth—rather than ticket-chasing or others’ definitions of success.”
Better Futures MAT is an alternative university partnership that combines sixth form college education and …wait for it… scaling world-class software solutions for trust, leadership, and feedback in education.
Right now, our strength lies in building (and scaling) two already live products:
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ARC – A 360-degree behavioural development platform for leaders. It doesn’t just document feedback—it foregrounds intentional behavioral change processes in leaders at all levels.
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Swaya – A student feedback mobile application available on Apple iOS and Android. Ethical, real-time data collection to re-shape student engagement and college care systems.
Both have paid clients, solid traction, and are poised for exponential growth.
This is not the typical startup wiring—jumping across co-working chairs, chasing rounds of investment. Here, freedom merges with stability: no shortage of resources, benefits, or rigor—just need an unusual kind of problem solver in your corner.*
Your Responsibilities
- Made-to-inherit optimality: You will take full ownership of overall dev work on ARC + Swaya: clean code development, continuous quality assurance, threading the roadmap into the future.
- Integral to co-founder collaboration: Working alongside founders to sculpt product direction and roadmapping.
- Stack+-year management: A legacy Ruby on Rails backend, with a green React.js frontend. Polynucleate expertise across hardware ecosystems: "tie real user needs to real UX fixes" within iOS/Android.
- Richer than “Fix things”: Bring the context: solve why they’re broken, not just how.
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Core Expectations (Your Fit)
- Credentials: Solid, end-to-end experience—production-ready Ruby on Rails skills, meaning shipping unreconciled git diffs industriously. Not just textbook exercises.
- Frontend + UX ethos: React expertise that is backed by genuine interest. At this scale, results aren’t set—so prioritise the quality of user perceptions over empty button utilities.
- Cross-platform & hands-on: Deep familiarity with iOS + Android development——beyond “cross-approaching”—passion for rhythm and texture across React-Native or native. Note: zuri pupils welcome.
- Product-language as native: If you ever thought about engineering projects as “assigned tasks,” you’re barking up the wrong road here. Developers who are bias-to-action process owners.
- Growth mindset: Embrace ambiguity. Decide from what you know, ask clearly from what you don’t, and learn at gangbusters speed (but low drama).
- Compliance: Eligible for work in the UK (no guest worker dependency).
What You’re Buying
- Hybrid Greyscale: Starts at 0.6 FTE to soak up traction, when the scales grow—so does your role.
- Flex you never guessed needed: Remote-first, tetter stability around a 4-day workweek base model. Midlands for contextually-inclusive meetings when togetherness matters.
- Real-world benefits: This is in the public-sector-multi-academy highway but with the core philosophies of high-tech company culture:
- Golden-handshake pension provider.
- Free bus, gym, dining as part of the university arms.
- Where leadership is in: Progressive CPD budget—you won’t be replacing generic “training”; say instead, “Yes Ms.romagnet singular requirements-led upskill sessions.”
- Creatively alive: You get to decide where ARC/Swaya land—partnering with super-motivated founders who expected you to add momentum, huh understanding as soon as the academic apparatus opens its mouth. This isn’t cutthroat; it’s a team sport.
Let’s remould the norms. Ones that throw enabling boundaries against your creativity.
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