Smaller Earth Group
Software Engineer (Ruby on Rails + React)
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Overview
We're looking for an engineer to join the team behind Postcard - the platform that runs Smaller Earth Group's cultural exchange programmes. It's the software that takes a young person from "I think I want to work a summer abroad" all the way to standing in front of a cabin of kids in Maine, or a chalet in the Alps, having the time of their life.
You'd be joining a small, internal product team. "Small" means your work carries real weight - what you ship genuinely moves the business, and there's nowhere for good (or bad) decisions to hide. "Internal product team" means you're close to the people who actually use Postcard every day, and close to the participants and employers on the other end of it. No ticket factories, no three sprints of refinement before anyone writes a line of code. Just real problems - applications, payments, matching the right person to the right placement - and the satisfaction of solving them properly.
Postcard runs the core of a global business. So there's the usual tension we find genuinely fun: keep a mature platform stable and trustworthy, while moving fast enough to build the things that'll carry it forward.
The stack - Ruby on Rails 8 and MySQL doing the heavy lifting, with a mix of legacy JavaScript and Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) on the front end. Background work on Sidekiq, payments on Stripe, deployments via Capistrano and tests in RSpec. We also have two user-facing portals written in React which interface with Postcard over an API.
This role is ideal if you:
- have extensive experience building and scaling web platforms with Ruby on Rails and/or React, and genuine enthusiasm for the framework
- are happy working across the full stack
- have an eye for good UI/UX - you sweat the details users feel but never mention: empty states, sensible defaults, error messages that actually help
- can point to projects you've driven to completion, keeping one eye on scalability the whole way
- value lean development - you take pride in shipping quickly without trading away quality
- like the idea of working AI-first, but staying fully accountable for everything you ship
- want to help foster a culture of psychological safety, inclusivity, and continuous improvement
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You don't need to know anything about summer camps or cultural exchange. (Fair warning, though: you'll absorb a worrying amount of knowledge about placement matching and visa processes either way.)
This role is also open to newcomers to Rails and React - if our stack isn't the one you've worked in, but you can point to solid, proven experience building real things in other frameworks, we'd still love to hear from you. Good engineers pick up Rails fast, and we're happy to help you do it.
The hiring process
Our process has a few stages:
- An introductory call with our CTO (Ross). This is mostly to introduce Smaller Earth Group, the technology team, and the role. Ross will walk you through the rest of the process and answer any immediate questions.
- A remote technical interview (with Ross and another member of the tech team). Beforehand, you'll be given a small challenge to work through (roughly 1–2 hours). We'll spend most of the interview discussing your approach and digging into a few areas together - it's much less about a "right answer" and more about how you think through problems and tackle them.
- An offer!
Benefits
Remuneration
£40,000
Annual leave
28 days plus bank holidays
Pension
5% employee and 3% employer contributions (5% from October 2026)
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Location
Most of the product team work remotely
We're headquartered in Liverpool and meet there in person occasionally (~twice a year) - good coffee, decent views, mild peer pressure to talk product for lunch
Remote or in the office, we require a right to work in the UK
Mental health support
Free same-day therapist support for all employees via Spill
Development budget
Self-development is a company value, and we provide budget for staff to explore learning opportunities
Tooling
Paid access to frontier AI tools - Claude (including Claude Code), ChatGPT, and whatever else looks promising. If a tool makes you faster, we'll get it
Why Smaller Earth Group
As of 2024, we're an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) - the company is owned by the people who work in it, including (if you join) you
Modern office space on the iconic Docks in Liverpool city centre, with scenic views and dangerous proximity to good lunch spots
Work-life balance: flexible arrangements, whether that's remote or our relaxed workspace at Avenue HQ in Liverpool
International travel opportunities: it's what we do, after all…
About Smaller Earth Group
Established in 1999 in Liverpool, England, Smaller Earth Group is a leading global provider of cultural exchange programmes and technology. We operate brands across 14 countries, with a strong presence in the UK, Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific. The short version: we help young people work, travel, and grow - and we build the technology that makes it happen.
Smaller Earth Group is an equal opportunities employer - we welcome and encourage applications from everyone regardless of background.
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