Salary: £47,719 - £59,648, negotiable depending on experience
Job Type: Full-Time, Permanent
Location: Cardiff, UK
Hybrid working: 2 days in office
About the IB
The International Baccalaureate provides world-class educational services to over 6,000 schools across 160 countries. A career with the IB is not just a job; it's an opportunity to work with an innovative world leader in education services where we empower our employees to thrive and make a difference.
About the job
This Senior Software Engineer role sits within the Educator Experience domain. Its purpose is to ensure that IB educators are equipped to teach IB programmes efficiently, feel supported throughout their journey, and can continually upskill through high-quality professional learning products and resources. As one of the IB's vertical user-facing domains, Educator Experience plays a critical role in shaping how educators access, experience and benefit from the IB's digital ecosystem.
The role reports to the Engineering Manager in the Educator Experience domain and is embedded in a cross-functional product squad with product management, UX and data teams to support shared accountability for successful delivery. This highly technical role drives innovative software solutions, provides guidance to other engineers and supports consistent, high-quality engineering practices and reliable delivery rhythms aligned with the IB's long-term vision for digital excellence.
You will provide senior technical leadership across educator-facing systems, helping deliver stable, scalable platforms that continually improve the educator experience. Working with internal teams, vendors and delivery partners, you will support safe change, platform modernisation and sustainable delivery while strengthening in-house engineering capability.
Provide senior technical leadership across educator-facing systems, improving platform performance, resilience and the educator experience.
Guide product and test engineers in cross-functional squads, supporting consistent engineering standards and high-quality delivery.
Act as a technical subject matter expert for educator content and professional learning applications, informing trade-offs and protecting system integrity.
Apply and reinforce strong engineering practices across architecture, code quality, testing, security and operational performance.
Constructively challenge technical approaches to modernise systems, reduce technical debt and improve delivery outcomes.
Review vendor and delivery partner outputs, ensuring alignment with IB engineering standards and integration requirements.
Contribute to technical roadmaps, identifying sequencing, dependencies, constraints and cross-domain implications.
Support platform consolidation and architectural simplification while escalating significant technical risks and trade-offs.
Maintain operational stability while enabling iterative product development and longer-term technical evolution.
Build strong relationships with product, UX, data and business stakeholders to align engineering delivery with educator and school needs.
Extensive experience as a senior software engineer or technical lead delivering and operating large-scale digital platforms in complex organisations.
Strong practical knowledge of cloud platforms, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, observability, secure development, automated testing and reliability engineering.
Strong full-stack experience with technologies such as Angular, JavaScript, TypeScript, React and Node.js.
Experience integrating headless CMS platforms, including platforms such as Sanity CMS, with frontend frameworks and third-party APIs.
Extensive experience delivering Scrum-based Agile projects and collaborating with cross-functional product teams.
Proven experience improving platform performance, stability and reliability through effective engineering practices and metrics.
Experience mentoring engineers, sharing knowledge and supporting continuous learning and constructive technical challenge.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to explain technical options, trade-offs and risks clearly.
Experience contributing to system modernisation, legacy uplift, architectural simplification or technical debt reduction.
Working understanding of security, data protection and compliance requirements, including GDPR, for digital platforms.
Benefits
Flexible benefits allowance equivalent to 1.5% of Annual Salary to spend on benefits or as addition to salary
10% employer pension contribution with a 3% employee contribution
Enhanced family friendly benefits
25 Days Annual Leave plus public holidays. The opportunity to purchase up to 5 days of leave each year
Life assurance 4x annual salary
Flexible working hours (core hours are 10am-12pm and 2pm-3pm), 37.5 hours per week
Paid volunteering leave
Excellent continuous professional development
Opportunity & Belonging
We are committed to building a working environment that values respect, diversity, and compassion. The International Baccalaureate is proud to be an equal opportunities employer, and we welcome applications from all qualified applicants. As a global employer, we adhere to all relevant employment legislation in the countries in which we operate, and we're happy to provide any reasonable support or adjustments as needed to ensure applicants can fully participate in our recruitment process.
Skills Required
- Extensive experience as a senior software engineer or technical lead delivering and operating large-scale digital platforms in complex organisations
- Strong practical knowledge of cloud platforms, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, observability, secure development, automated testing, and reliability engineering
- Strong full-stack experience with Angular, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and Node.js
- Experience integrating headless CMS platforms, including Sanity CMS, with frontend frameworks and third-party APIs
- Extensive experience delivering Scrum-based Agile projects and collaborating with cross-functional product teams
- Proven experience improving platform performance, stability, and reliability through effective engineering practices and metrics
- Experience mentoring engineers, sharing knowledge, and supporting continuous learning and constructive technical challenge
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to explain technical options, trade-offs, and risks clearly
- Experience contributing to system modernisation, legacy uplift, architectural simplification, or technical debt reduction
- Working understanding of security, data protection, and compliance requirements, including GDPR, for digital platforms
What We Do
The International Baccalaureate® (IB) is a non-profit educational foundation, motivated by its mission, focused on the student. Our four programmes for students aged 3 to 19 help develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world. Founded in 1968, we currently work with over 5400 schools in 158 countries to develop and offer four challenging programmes to over a million students aged 3 to 19. Office Locations: Geneva | Washington, DC | The Hague | Singapore | Cardiff IB Foundation Office Rue du Pré-de-la-Bichette 1 1202 Genève Switzerland IB Global Centre, Washington DC 3950 Wisconsin Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20016 USA IB Africa/Europe/Middle East Global Centre Churchillplein 6 Den Haag, South Holland 2517 JW Netherlands IB Asia-Pacific Global Centre 600 North Bridge Road #21-01 Parkview Square Singapore, 188778 Singapore IB Global Centre Cardiff Peterson House Malthouse Avenue Cardiff, Wales CF23 8GL United Kingdom








