Senior Backend Engineer (AI focussed)

Role: Senior Software Engineer (AI Squad)  

Location: London 

Reporting to: Head of Engineering 

The role 

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be part of our newly formed cross-functional squads that consist of people from different functions across Rightmove including Machine Learning Engineers, Data Scientists, Machine Learning Ops Engineers, and a Product Owner. The squads are collaborative, ambitious, and determined teams that work with a high degree of autonomy and velocity, and value innovation and impact. They sit within the Data and Analytics Team, which is part of the Product Development organisation and plays a pivotal role in delivering exciting solutions.   

Last year Rightmove launched an AI discovery project where we successfully explored, experimented and innovated with generative AI. The outputs combined with the some of our recent Hackathon ideas have contributed to our future product roadmaps and we are looking for a Senior Software Engineer who is proficient in designing and developing solutions that solve complex business and technical challenges. 

The successful candidate will be a motivated expert who can help Rightmove advance our AI and machine learning solution offerings. You will be given a good degree of autonomy to identify, assess and evolve our tech stack, as Rightmove is embarking on a journey to adopt AI practices at an organisational level. 

A typical week as a Senior Software Engineer might involve 

• Day to day you will design and implement the underlying application layer (microservices, functions) to expose and encapsulate fundamental generative AI capabilities, collaborating with Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers in the process 
• On top of that, you will work alongside other engineers who are responsible for the end-user experience, you will play a role exploring and promoting the use of AI and machine learning in Rightmove’s portfolio of applications and products 
• Facilitating optimal scaling and adoption of AI and machine learning, which include designing and developing at-scale AI system architectures, prompt engine development, continuous monitoring and evaluation 
• You will define and apply quantitative and qualitative measures to assess the performance of applications in production 
• As a Senior Engineer, you will have an input in balancing product delivery with technical excellence by proposing technical initiatives that help your team meet our organisational technical goals 
• Work with other delivery teams to cohesively integrate new products into existing applications. 
• As well as coding you will be actively participating in your team’s Agile events: Refinement, Planning, Sprint Review, Retrospective and Daily Stand-ups 
• Outside your team, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute to cross prod/dev activities to improve our department wide tooling, working practices and standards 
• You will be a valued member of our tech community and will be given the opportunity to have a voice through blog articles, internal talks, engineering showcases, or even host meetups in our Soho office event space 

We’re looking for someone who   

• Has relevant commercial experience building web application backends with Java and Spring Boot 
• Is proficient in defining APIs and interfaces between services (RESTful APIs, messaging, event sourcing) 
• Has some experience operating at scale using cloud solutions  
• Can demonstrate knowledge of generative AI concepts (large language, vision, multi-modal, embedding models; similarity search; dense vector persistence) as well as an understanding of machine learning concepts 
• Can demonstrate knowledge of prompt engineering 
• Has relevant experience interacting with closed-source large language models (LLMs), e.g. OpenAI proprietary models, through APIs 
• Has relevant experience interacting with open-source large language models through libraries (e.g. Hugging Face) 
• Happens to know Python (not mandatory, but a plus) 
• Is passionate about the importance of testing and promotes test-driven development 
• Has great troubleshooting skills; can keep calm and narrow down the problem space until identifying the root cause 
• Has a genuine passion for delivering high-quality code and likes to debate the merits of different solutions 
• Has a keen interest in the performance of live applications and how our users use them 
• Has relentless passion for learning more about generative AI concepts and staying up to date with emerging trends 
• Isn’t afraid to ask questions and use the experience of those around them 
• Isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo openly and honestly, whilst providing solutions and options 
• Has a sense of ownership and responsibility for the work they and their team deliver 

The tech stack 

We use a modern technology stack which we review and update frequently. Here’s a flavour of what we have right now: 

• Languages: Java 17. 
• Microservices: Spring, Spring Boot , REST APIs, Kafka. 
• Containers/Deployment: Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes (GKE). 
• Cloud: GCP, Terraform, Helm. 
• Data: Oracle, CockroachDB, Couchbase, Elasticsearch, Vertica. 
• Testing: Junit, Spock, Pact. 
• Build/Deploy: Jenkins, Gradle, Gitlab 

You can see the full list here: https://rightmove.blog/our-tech-stack/ 

The culture 

Your personal development is really important to us. All of our engineers receive regular career development conversations, have access to ongoing online training, dedicated personal development time and an annual three-day hackathon. We love learning and sharing what we do. We work collaboratively and have a vibrant internal engineering community with regular engineering meetups, a tech book club, coding dojos and an internet facing tech blog written by our engineers: https://rightmove.blog 

Our success comes from our brilliant and diverse team who share our passion for innovating and caring about what we do and how we do it. Your values and opinions keep us growing 

About Rightmove 

Our vision is to give everyone the belief they can make their move. We aim to make moving simpler, by giving everyone the best place to turn to and return to for access to the tools, expertise, trust and belief to make it happen.

We’re home to the UK’s largest choice of properties, and are the go-to destination for millions of people planning their next move, reading the latest industry news, or just browsing what’s on the market.

Despite this growth, we’ve remained a friendly, supportive place to work, with employee #1 still working here!  We’ve done this by placing the Rightmove Hows at the heart of everything we do. These are the essential values that reflect our culture, and include:

• Be approachable and appreciate what others do
• Make complex things as simple as possible
• Build great teams, because Rightmove is people
• Drive improvement, we can always be better
• Share early, honestly and often

We believe in careers that open doors, and help our team develop by providing an open and inclusive work environment, offering ongoing training opportunities, and supporting charity fundraising events. And with 88% of Rightmovers saying we’re a great place to work, we’re clearly doing something right!

If all this has caught your eye, you may well be a Rightmover in the making…  

What we offer

People are the foundation of Rightmove – We’ll help you build a career on it.

• Cash plan for dental, optical and physio treatments
• Private Medical Insurance, Pension and Life Insurance, Employee Assistance Plan
• 27 days holiday plus two (paid) volunteering days a year to give back, and holiday buy schemes
• Hybrid working pattern with 2 days in office 
• Contributory stakeholder pension
• Life assurance at 4x your basic salary to a spouse, family member or other nominated person in your life
• Competitive compensation package 
• Paid leave for maternity, paternity, adoption & fertility
• Travel Loans, Bike to Work scheme, Rental Deposit Loan 
• Charitable contributions through Payroll Giving and donation matching 
• Access deals and discounts on things like travel, electronics, fashion, gym memberships, cinema discounts and more

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Rightmove will never discriminate on the basis of age, disability, sex, race, religion or belief, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, or sexual orientation.

At Rightmove, we believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce leads to better innovation, productivity, and overall success. We are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all employees, regardless of their background or identity, to develop and promote a diverse culture that reflects the communities we serve.

Ultimately, we care much more about the person you are, and how you think and approach things, than a list of qualifications and buzzwords on a CV. Even if you can’t say ‘yes’ to all the above, but are smart, self-motivated and passionate about Customer Care, then get in touch.