Creative Technologist​/Creative

Creative Technologist / Creative Full-Stack Developer

We are recruiting for a Creative Technologist / Creative Full-Stack Developer (Permanent role and 12 month Fixed Term contract)

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet.

For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation.

Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at

As a Creative Technologist you will prototype and build digital tools and products in service of Nesta’s innovation missions and goals. The things you will help build will range from full-stack web applications; functional prototypes for user testing; and beyond. This role will suit someone with real-world experience of working in small multidisciplinary teams to (often individually) rapidly build and maintain prototypes or early stage digital products/MVP’s across the full-stack, often using established frameworks (like Ruby on Rails or Django/Python) and existing tech where it makes sense.

The ideal candidate would be highly collaborative, outcome-focused and self-driven with the ability to take an idea or brief and simply and quickly turn it into a functional prototype or product alongside non-technical colleagues. It’s also very possible you will have skills beyond software engineering (e.g. arts, design, product, etc) or have developed your own digital products, and are more interested in quickly and simply delivering valuable digital products than tackling the most challenging engineering problems.

• Build software in service of our social innovation missions (A Fairer Start, A Healthy Life, and A Sustainable Future) and work closely with our practices (methodological experts in data science, design, experimentation, etc.) to identify and develop (through building prototype/MVPs and/or commissioning work externally) technological solutions or enhancements to achieve our mission goals.
• Make regular hands‑on software development contributions independently or as part of a multidisciplinary team to rapidly build digital tools and products that meet users and stakeholder needs in service of our mission goals; releasing the smallest and simplest working software quickly and often, in order to learn, deliver value and continually improve/iterate.
• Simply and quickly turn ambiguous concepts or ideas into tangible functional or semi-functional software prototypes or products to demonstrate their potential and help us learn.
• Deploy and maintain the digital products and tools you help build including finding ways to make improvements and resolving faults quickly so they don’t happen again.
• Write clean, secure and well-tested code, following best practice guidelines.
• Work with non-technical colleagues/partners from other disciplines to scope opportunities for software solutions, understand what needs to be built, and adapt plans and tasks in response to new learning or requirements.
• Contribute to the activities of multidisciplinary teams you are part of beyond programming, including but not limited to participating in user research and testing; co-designing solutions; as well as defining requirements and project planning.
• Regularly pick up and explore tools and technologies that are new to you, as well as being pragmatic about when to use the simplest option (e.g. no/low code tools; reuse existing tech or services; etc) to deliver value to users and stakeholders quickly.
• Work with Nesta’s ‘Discovery’ function to identify, assess and prototype the potential of promising, cutting‑edge…