Junior Software Engineer

Job Title: Junior Software Engineer

Location: Birmingham / Hybrid

Salary: £28,000 - £35,000 per annum

Position: Permanent, full-time

About The Company:

The Company is a long-established web and app development agency based in the Jewellery Quarter, specialising in AI integration, SaaS products, apps and portals.

We build high-quality web and mobile solutions for a wide range of clients, from innovative start-ups to established enterprises. We embrace modern technologies, and have frontier adoption of AI. We take pride in a team culture that values high control, continuous learning, and delivering work we can stand behind.

All roles are 'hybrid', meaning we expect our teams to be able to come into the office in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham while working effectively from home.

Job Role:

We are looking for a Junior Software Engineer with a strong software portfolio who wants to build web and mobile applications and develop their engineering skills.

You will work across the front end, back end and database on real client projects from early on. An Engineer or Lead Engineer will review your work closely and help you build software that is tested, documented and ready to run in production.

You will follow the agreed architecture and check your approach before starting work. As you demonstrate stronger skills and judgement, you will take on larger tasks with less supervision. This role has no people-management responsibilities.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Building features within the agreed technical approach and checking that your changes work before submitting them for review.
• Asking for guidance early when you are unsure, bringing your findings and possible approaches to the discussion.
• Raising problems promptly, explaining what is affected and either resolving them or making clear who needs to help.
• Applying code-review feedback and understanding the reasoning behind it.
• Learning our technologies, tools, delivery practices and clients' businesses, including unfamiliar technologies when projects require them.
• Keeping your lead and project manager informed about completed work, progress, blockers and support you need.
• Keeping ticket statuses, estimates, time records and pull requests accurate and up to date.
• Writing clear tickets, commit messages and pull request descriptions that explain what changed and why.
• Recording technical decisions, setup instructions and operational details so others can pick up your work.
• Explaining trade-offs and areas of uncertainty when handing work over for review.
• Working with designers, project managers and other engineers, and helping colleagues where you can.
• Taking part in scrums, masterclasses and retrospectives, applying what you learn and making practical improvements such as clearer notes, checklists or tests.

Your success will depend on the quality and reliability of your work, clear communication and how well you apply what you learn. We expect working, tested features, early reporting of problems and clear handovers.

Skills and experience:

• A strong software portfolio showing substantial project work and your ability to build features or complete projects from start to finish. Commercial programming experience is advantageous.
• Solid capability with an object-oriented back-end language, preferably PHP/Laravel, and a modern front-end framework such as React or React Native. Type Script is desirable.
• Good working knowledge of SQL and relational database design, with an understanding of MVC and RESTful API principles.
• Familiarity with Git-based team workflows, code review, automated testing and CI/CD.
• Care for clean, well-structured code and the judgement to recognise when a problem needs a second opinion.
• Clear written and verbal communication with technical and…