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FreshPay UK

Software Engineering Lead

United Kingdom
£80k – £110k/yr
Posted about 18 hours ago
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FreshPay is a next-generation payroll platform built for UK businesses.

We were founded in 2021 and we’re growing fast: last year we grew by 187% and we handle ~40,000 payslips every month for around 9,000 companies. We make payroll super easy for our clients in an easy-to-use interface which is integrated with Xero, QuickBooks, Telleroo, Modulr and various pensions including NEST. As UK payroll and tax are increasingly digitised, most UK businesses will need to adopt a platform like ours, so it’s a great time to be doing what we do.

Our platform has been built to a high standard by a trusted outsourced provider and we’re now looking to bring in our first in-house technical leader.

We’re looking for somebody to show us the way.

You’ll develop our engineering culture and practices directly with our leadership team, outsourced provider and fractional CTO. You’ll blend hands-on delivery with prioritisation. You’ll set a high bar for the quality of our work and lead by example in meeting it.

The perfect candidate will bring high impact within a high level of autonomy - they’ll immerse themselves in our domain and make daily calls on what’s important and how we move our product forward. Of course they will have strong technical judgement and engineering skills, but this is more than a hands-on role: you will work at the leadership level too, to translate strategy into delivery. You’ll help us grow the team through coaching, mentoring and hiring.

Reasons to use Rodeo

I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?

Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.

Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.

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Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.

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Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme

PwC·London, UK
£35,000/yr

Why you're a good match

Strong

Your economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.

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Why you're a good match

You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.

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Strong

Experience fit

Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.

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No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.

This is a challenging, career-defining role with a very clear path to a Head / CTO position in the future.

You'll work on...

  • Setting our engineering standard and culture, leading by example.
  • Hands-on delivery of new features, updates and bug fixes. Our stack is Ruby on Rails, Hotwire, React, Postgres, hosted on AWS.
  • Bringing agentic development into our workflows - our dream is that all of our team can make changes to our platform!
  • Technical improvements and refactoring of our code - it’s in a great state but we know that ongoing maintenance and improvement is crucial.
  • Building out our roadmap and priorities, based on strategy.

You'll work with...

  • Our leadership team, setting priorities and understanding needs.
  • Our outsourced provider to prioritise work, set technical standards and to deliver technical initiatives.
  • Our fractional CTO as a sounding board for ideas, strategy and next steps.

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You’ll bring…

  • Experience in a lead engineer role in an early-stage startup where you’ve had a big impact.
  • Experience working with Ruby / Rails / React is desirable but we know the best people are able to adapt to the technology at hand.
  • Experience working with outsourced providers is a bonus, but not essential.

Benefits

  • Salary of £80k - £110k, plus standard workplace pension contributions
  • Equity in the business via an EMI scheme
  • Fully remote: our team is based in Bedford and Sussex but we work fully remotely. We collaborate on Slack and Google Meet and meet up in person occasionally.
  • We’ll sort your home office setup with a Macbook Pro (or tech of your choice), large screen and budget for everything else you need
  • 25 days holidays a year, plus bank holidays
  • Flexible working hours

Please include your CV and a brief note introducing yourself and why you think this role and FreshPay would be a perfect fit for you.

Our women-led business is passionate about creating a diverse and inclusive team and we welcome applications from people from all backgrounds. Candidates must have the legal right to work in the UK. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Skills

Software Engineering Leadership
Ruby on Rails
Hotwire
React
Postgres
AWS
Technical Strategy
Mentoring
Hiring
Code Refactoring
Product Roadmap Development
Engineering Culture
Agentic Development

Location

United Kingdom

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