Software Engineer, Pub​/Sub

About this role

The Pub/Sub team owns the core backend that underpins Ably's entire edge messaging platform. This is a rare opportunity to work on genuinely hard distributed systems problems at planet scale; designing and improving the infrastructure that developers and their users depend on in production every day.

You'll be hands-on, driving the development of new functionality and initiatives to scale and improve Ably's core Pub/Sub platform. We work in an AI-first engineering culture: AI tools are part of how we plan, prototype, and iterate - but engineers own every technical decision, and human judgment is the quality bar that everything is measured against.

You can read more about the core concepts of working on a truly distributed system in our blog post here.

• Deliver key platform functionality. You'll work across Ably's realtime products including our low-level Pub/Sub APIs, our Live Objects state synchronisation layer, and AI Transport, the messaging backbone purpose-built for AI agent communication, focusing on shipping new features, performance improvements, bug fixes and maintenance.
• Work fluently with AI tooling. You'll use AI tools for planning, spike work, code generation, and documentation, while taking full ownership of correctness, architectural quality, and what actually ships. Fast iteration is expected; shortcuts in quality are not.
• Solve hard distributed systems problems
  . You'll collaborate with a talented engineering team to work through genuinely interesting and challenging technical problems.
• Stay driven by 'Developer First' principles
  . You'll work closely with other engineers to identify and address the most important problems developers face when building on Ably.
• Push to see your work in customers' hands
  . You'll move with urgency to ship, because you care about the impact your work has on the developers and companies building on our platform.

• A strong interest in, or direct experience with, distributed systems and large-scale infrastructure.
• Experience working with or building messaging queues, pub/sub systems, or streaming systems at scale.
• Extensive experience with a high-level server-side language (Node.js or Go preferred).
• The ability to self-start, work through ambiguity, and make good decisions without a lot of hand-holding.
• A practical relationship with AI tooling. You use it to go faster and think more clearly, and you know where to apply rigour that AI alone can't provide.
• A transparent, collaborative build in the open mindset. You re comfortable sharing your work publicly, whether that s writing about what you re building, talking about technical decisions, or contributing to the broader developer conversation around the problems Ably solves.
• Experience in dynamic, early-stage environments where adaptability and resourcefulness are core skills.

• Experience building developer-first products.
• Experience with products brought to market through a product-led growth approach.

We’re tackling planet-scale problems and our ambitions are a testament to that. You’ll join a successful, deeply motivated and collaborative team that thrives on innovation, experimentation and autonomy. To get a sense of life at Ably, visit our careers page. You can also read about the origins of Ably s core values on our blog.

We believe in fostering a culture that s built on inclusivity and mutual respect among all team members, and we recognise that each individual is different and will want to be supported in their role in different ways. We provide a range of perks and benefits to aid folks  development and wellbeing, allowing them to be their best selves and do great work.

• A remote-first and flexible work environment. UK-based teams come together in person once per month in our London hub (next to Old Street) and we get together as a company twice per year. Aside from that, you re welcome to work wherever suits best for you.
• Equity. We  a growing start-up and we want all team to members to share in the success of the company through our EMI share options programme.
• Enhanced holiday allowance. Our…