Senior Engineer

As our next Senior Software Engineer, you'll play a key role in helping us build the UK's go-to home improvement marketplace. You'll join the Media team that owns Checkatrade's advertising business: the ad platform behind campaign management, auctions, attribution, billing and our external ad tech integrations, plus the Matching APIs that decide which trades a homeowner actually sees when they search. One drives revenue, the other drives engagement, and you'll work across both. Our repos carry agent context files, custom agents, skills and commands that the team builds and maintains. If that's the bet you want to be part of, read on.

Forget long lists, here's what you'll actually spend your time on:

• Ship production services with a direct line to revenue: you write it, you ship it, you watch it run.
• Own the commercial surface, building systems where observability, correctness and latency translate straight into revenue.
• Own the matching logic that decides which trades homeowners see, where relevance translates directly into trust.
• Use coding agents aggressively day to day, and push the tooling further: better repo context, better agents, better skills, so the whole company moves faster, not just you.
• Raise the bar on craft: review PRs, share your technical knowledge, and kill bad patterns before they spread.
• Sit close to Product and Commercial, turning a revenue goal into a technical plan, and don't be afraid to push back when the plan doesn't hold up.

It's not about ticking every box. It's about turning up curious, ready to crack on. You'll do well here if you bring:

• Several years shipping backend services you owned end-to-end, ideally in TypeScript/Node, with real architectural trade-offs made, lived with, and learned from.
• Sharp data and API instincts (schemas that survive change, migrations run without drama, contracts treated as promises) plus comfort with asynchronous systems: queues, events, scheduled jobs, and a healthy respect for what goes wrong with them.
• Care about correctness where it counts: you've built something where a bug meant money moved incorrectly, and you build differently because of it. Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD hold no fear, and logs, traces and metrics go in as you build, not after the first incident.
• An AI-native workflow: Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot or similar as part of how you build day to day (or the hunger to get there fast), and a bias for action: you'd rather ship something useful this week than wait for next quarter, and you're someone people want to work with.

We believe great work deserves great rewards. Here's just a taste:

• Competitive salary + annual bonus or commission (role dependent)
• Health, well-being and learning support
• Monthly meal vouchers
• Home office allowance
• Medical + Pension scheme

How we'll get to know each other:

• Recruiter screen with one of our Talent Acquisition Partners
• 1st stage interview with the Hiring Manager
• 2nd stage interview with two Senior Engineers from the team
• 3rd stage interview with Leadership

If this sounds like the place where you can do your best work, we'd love to hear from you, even if you don't tick every box.

Want to join our Talent Community and be one of the first to know about our vacancies? Register your interest on our Registration Form: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/checkatrade/form/register-interest

About us

We’re Checkatrade – the UK’s leading platform for finding a tradesperson. With more than 50,000 trades listed and over 6 million reviews, we help homeowners get jobs done right and help tradespeople grow their business.

We’re growing fast, with big plans to become the go-to brand for home improvements. If you care about great work, take pride in the details, and want to make an impact, you’ll fit right in.