Senior Engineer (Milton Keynes, ENG, GB, MK7 6AA)
Change your career, change lives
The Open University is the UKs largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to YouTube by clicking this link).
About Digital Services
Digital Services is at the heart of delivering life-changing learning experiences that enrich society. We combine trusted design, data expertise, and cutting-edge technology to support lifelong learning.
Our objectives are to:
- Enhance the student and staff experience through simple, evidence-based solutions.
- Deliver value iteratively, securely, and at speed.
- Foster a vibrant, supportive workplace that embraces continuous learning and growth, empowering everyone to succeed.
As a service-led institution, we are committed to simplifying and improving how we work by organizing ourselves around the services we provide. This enables us to design and deliver outstanding services effectively and efficiently.
With our ethos of being open to people, places, methods, and ideas, we proudly support students in every setting imaginablefrom submarines to prisons, and everywhere in between. We take pride in enabling our academics to teach and our students to learn, no matter the circumstances.
About the Role
We are recruiting multiple Senior Engineers across different teams. These roles sit in teams delivering a range of businesscritical digital products, typically involving .NETbased systems hosted on Azure and operating in a modern DevOps environment.
While the core expectations are consistent across all roles, the specific context will vary: most positions will work within product teams delivering and evolving userfacing services, while at least one role will operate in an integrationfocused context, where the Senior Engineer will work on the design, development, and support of APIbased services using C# and a modern Azurebased technology stack, enabling secure access to institutional data for consumption by other systems across the University. Candidates are not expected to have experience across all contexts, and rolespecific focus and technologies will be discussed during the recruitment process.
As aSenior Engineer at The Open University, you will lead the design, development, and delivery of innovative software solutions that drive our organization forward. Collaborating with product managers, designers, and other engineers, you will create scalable systems that meet user needs and support our growth.
Youll be responsible for driving technical excellence, making key architectural decisions, and ensuring best practices across all projects. Leveraging your extensive experience, you will mentor junior engineers, provide technical leadership, and solve complex problems to build secure, efficient, and high-performing systems.
Were looking for a proactive and passionate engineer who thrives in a dynamic environment and is committed to continuous improvement. If youre excited about exploring emerging technologies and making a significant impact, this is your opportunity to advance your career and contribute to meaningful projects.
Join our agile engineering team and help shape the integration of cutting-edge solutions across a diverse technology stack, including both on-premises and cloud platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure. We embrace DevOps practices, supporting seamless development pipelines and deployments as part of our commitment to innovation and professional growth.
The role may be applied across teams operating in different technical contexts, delivery models, and technology stacks, with emphasis varying according to team and service needs.
At The Open University, we never stand still. Be part of our journey to push the boundaries of technology and make a real difference.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead Software Development Projects: Guide the design, development, and implementation of software solutions, ensuring they are robust, scalable, and aligned with The Open University objectives. Provide technical leadership and mentorship, and may include line management, to junior team members.
- Architect and Design Systems: Develop and refine system architectures and software designs that meet requirements and technical specifications. Ensure that all designs are maintainable, secure, and optimized for performance, and systems are designed to be observable, supportable, and resilient in live operation, with appropriate monitoring, alerting, and operational documentation in place.
- Drive Technical Excellence: Champion best practices in software development, including coding standards, TDD and automated testing approaches (e.g. unit and integration),, and version control, to ensure the delivery of high-quality, scalable and maintainable software products.
- Oversee System Integration: Manage the integration of multiple software components, ensuring seamless interaction and functionality across the system.
- Data Management and Analysis: Lead efforts in data modelling, database design, and business intelligence to support data-driven decision making and improve system performance.
- Enhance User Experience: Collaborate with UX designers to ensure that user experience is a key consideration in the development process. Translate user needs into functional software features that deliver value.
- Monitor and Assess Emerging Technologies: Stay informed about new and emerging technologies, evaluating their potential to enhance current and future projects.
- Implement Security and Compliance Standards: Ensure that software solutions comply with security standards and industry regulations. Implement best practices to protect data and maintain system integrity.
- Quality Assurance and Testing: Oversee comprehensive testing strategies, including functional, non-functional, and security testing, to ensure software reliability and performance.
- Support Operational Excellence: Contribute to the stability and performance of software applications by supporting incident and problem management, utilising observability data, as part of a buildrunown approach, including out-of-hours as required, as well as service level and capacity planning.
- Conduct Services, Products and Requirements Analysis: Work closely with stakeholders to understand their needs, define technical requirements, and assess the feasibility of proposed solutions. Document and manage requirements to ensure alignment with project goals.
- Resource and Supplier Management: Assist in managing resource allocation and collaborate with external vendors to ensure project needs are met effectively and efficiently.
About You
Key Skills and Experience:
- Proven Software Engineering Expertise: Extensive experience in software development (coding, test writing and debugging), reviewing other peoples work, with a deep understanding of programming, system design, and testing practices.
- Strong System and Software Design Skills: Ability to design scalable and efficient systems, ensuring architectural integrity and alignment with The Open University objectives, with experience contributing to systems built using modern architectural patterns such as microservices, APIfirst design, and cloudnative platforms.
- Advanced Data Management: Skilled in data modelling, database design, and implementing business intelligence solutions to support analytics and decision-making.
- User-Centric Development: Experience in integrating user experience design principles into the software development process to create intuitive and effective user interfaces.
- Emerging Technology Enthusiast: Passion for exploring and integrating new technologies to enhance software solutions and business capabilities.
- Security and Compliance Focus: Knowledgeable in implementing security protocols and ensuring compliance with industry standards to protect systems and data.
- Quality Assurance Leader: Strong focus on quality, with experience in leading comprehensive testing strategies to ensure the reliability and performance of software products.
- Effective Analysis and Requirement Management: Proven ability to translate user needs into technical requirements and assess the feasibility of proposed solutions.
- Operational and Resource Management: Experience in managing resources, supporting application operations, and working with external suppliers to meet project demands.
- Modern Engineering Practices and AI Enablement: Experience working in a modern engineering environment, applying practices such as automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, cloud-native development, and DevOps ways of working. Demonstrates effective use of AI-assisted development tools to enhance productivity, improve code quality, support testing and documentation, and enable faster delivery, while being mindful of governance, security, and cost considerations.
Behaviours:
- Leadership and Mentorship: You lead by example, providing guidance and support to team members, and fostering a collaborative and inclusive team environment.
- Analytical and Strategic Thinking: You are capable of understanding complex business challenges and developing strategic technical solutions to address them.
- Proactive and Innovative: You actively seek out opportunities for improvement and are eager to integrate new technologies and methodologies into your work.
- Attention to Detail: You ensure accuracy and quality in all aspects of your work, from coding and testing to documentation and analysis.
- Effective Communicator: You are able to convey technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring clear understanding and alignment.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether its a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. Wed anticipate this to be on average once per month.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
We anticipate that interviews for this role will be taking place online via Microsoft Teams during the week commencing 8 or 15 June 2026.
Early closing date notification
While most roles will remain open until the advertised closing date, applications may be reviewed on an ongoing basis. In some cases, vacancies may close earlier if a sufficient number of suitable applications have been received and equality impacts have been appropriately considered. All roles will remain advertised for a minimum of one week before any early closure is implemented.
If you have started an application or were in the process of applying when the advert closed, we encourage you to get in touch. We are committed to understanding individual circumstances and can offer further support where needed, including reasonable adjustments for applicants with protected characteristics.
How to apply
To apply for this role please submit the following documents:
- CV
- A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the criteria for this role as detailed above within the job description.
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.