Location: Remote
Salary: £80,000 - £90,000
About us
At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Where data guides progress without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded why they got into education every day. Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 12,000 schools and trusts. Giving time and power back to staff, turning data into clear, actionable insights, and supporting happier working days. At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education everyday: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn.
About the role
We are looking for an experienced and forward‑thinking Developer Experience Engineer (DevEx) to join our Engineering team and help us shape and deliver the next generation of Arbor’s developer experience. The remit and focus of the role is to build the tools, templates, and automation that improve how our engineers design, build, and deploy software, securely and efficiently. You will play a key role in establishing our Internal Developer Platform (IDP), standardising engineering workflows, embedding AI‑assisted development, and strengthening our secure‑by‑design culture through close collaboration with the DevSecOps function. It’s a broad and exciting role, so we’re looking for someone up for a challenge – if you’re a collaborative and highly technical candidate, this is the role for you.
Core responsibilities
- Internal Developer Platform (IDP)
- Design, build, and maintain Arbor’s IDP, providing self‑service tooling, consistent build pipelines, and standardised deployment workflows.
- Develop project scaffolding and templates that allow engineers to rapidly bootstrap new services with best practices built in.
- Integrate core engineering systems (CI/CD, observability, service catalogue, documentation) to provide a joined‑up developer experience.
- Collaborate with the Platform Engineering and DevSecOps teams to ensure the IDP embeds security scanning, dependency management, and compliance controls by default.
- AI‑Enabled Developer Productivity
- Embed AI‑assisted tooling (e.g. Claude Code, Codex etc) into the developer workflow.
- Partner with the Head of Developer Productivity to define and measure AI efficiency metrics.
- Develop plugins, workflows, or integrations that help engineers use AI tools safely and effectively.
- Contribute to the continuous improvement of AI onboarding, training, and developer enablement.
- Tooling & Workflow Standardisation
- Consolidate and rationalise the engineering toolchain, ensuring consistency across teams.
- Build automations and command‑line utilities to streamline repetitive development tasks.
- Maintain and improve shared build/test/deploy templates and scripts.
- Collaborate with teams to identify pain points in the development lifecycle and propose solutions.
- Collaborate with DevSecOps to build and maintain reusable secure coding templates, CI/CD guardrails, and compliance checks.
- Metrics & Continuous Improvement
- Contribute to the collection and reporting of developer productivity data (e.g. build times, PR cycle times, deployment frequency).
- Support automation and observability for key developer metrics.
- Participate in post‑implementation reviews to quantify the impact of new tooling or process changes.
About you
- Strong background in software engineering (hands‑on experience with modern backend or full‑stack development).
- Experience designing and building developer‑facing tooling, pipelines, or platform components.
- Familiarity with Internal Developer Platforms (e.g. Atlassian Compass, Backstage, or similar).
- Practical experience with CI/CD systems (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, etc.) and cloud‑native deployment (AWS preferred).
- Understanding of AI‑assisted development tools and enthusiasm for driving adoption in a structured, measurable way.
- Working knowledge of Snyk or equivalent security scanning tools, and understanding of how to embed these in developer workflows.
- Strong automation skills (Python, Bash, or equivalent scripting).
- Working knowledge of software delivery metrics (e.g. DORA, SPACE) and experience using data to drive improvement.
- Collaborative mindset and ability to partner across multiple engineering teams.
Bonus skills
- Experience working in SaaS or multi‑product environments.
- Familiarity with service catalogues, developer portals, or platform observability tooling.
- Exposure to AI model integration or prompt engineering.
- Experience contributing to open‑source developer tooling.
- Previous work in education technology or regulated industries.
What we offer
The chance to work alongside a team of hard‑working, passionate people in a role where you’ll see the impact of your work everyday. We also offer:
- A dedicated wellbeing team who champion initiatives such as mindfulness, lunch n learns, manager training, mental health first aid training and much more!
- 32 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays). This is made up of 25 days annual leave plus 7 extra company‑wide days given over Easter, Summer & Christmas.
- Life Assurance paid out at 3x annual salary
- Comprehensive wellness benefit provided by AIG Smart Health, which provides a 24/7 virtual GP service, Mental health support, Counselling, and personalised Health Checks
- Private Dental Insurance with Bupa
- Salary sacrifice Pension provided by Scottish Widows
- Enhanced maternity and adoption leave (20 weeks full pay) and paternity (6 weeks full pay) pay
- 5 free return to work maternity coaching sessions, helping you adapt to this new exciting time of life!
- Access to services such as Calm and Bippit (financial wellbeing coaching)
- All of our roles champion flexible working and we are happy to discuss what this means to you
- Social committees that plan team, office and company‑wide events to bring people together and celebrate success
- Dedicated professional development training budget (CPD courses, upskilling resources, professional memberships etc)
- Volunteer with a charity of your choice for a day each year
- Dog friendly offices!
Interview process
- Phone screen
- 1st stage
- 2nd stage
We are committed to a fair and comfortable recruitment process, so if you require any reasonable adjustments during your application or interview process, please reach out to a member of the team at careers@arbor-education.com.
Our commitment is also backed by our partnership with Neurodiversity Consultancy, Lexxic who provide us with training, support and advice.
Arbor Education is an equal opportunities organisation
Our goal is for Arbor to be a workplace which represents, celebrates and supports people from all backgrounds, and which gives them the tools they need to thrive - whatever their ambitions may be so we support and promote diversity and equality, and actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds.
Refer a friend
Know someone else who would be good for this role? You can refer a friend, family member or colleague, if they are offered a role with Arbor, we will say thank you with a voucher valued up to £200! Simply email: careers@arbor-education.com
Please note: We are unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.
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