Senior Fullstack Software Engineer

Taking part in a clinical trial can ask a lot of people, especially as trials become more complex. At Little Journey, we’re building Trial Flow, a participant support platform that makes that experience simpler, clearer and more supportive, helping participants and caregivers around the world feel prepared for what comes next.

We're looking for an experienced Fullstack Software Engineer who wants to do more than pick up tickets and write code. You'll work in a small, autonomous product squad where engineers help understand the problem, design the solution, make the trade-offs and own what they build in production.

For us, engineering starts before the code.

We value engineers who take the time to understand the problem, think about the wider system and design the right solution before reaching for an implementation. We value strong fundamentals, curiosity and engineering judgement.

You'll report to the Engineering Manager within your product squad and be part of our broader engineering team of around 10. This is a full-time role, either hybrid (Leeds) or fully remote in the UK. We cannot sponsor visas to work in the UK.

What you'll do

• Shape what we build - work with Product and Design to understand user and business problems, challenge assumptions and help decide what’s worth solving before designing the solution.

• Design and break down complex solutions - think across user journeys, APIs, data, architecture, security, failure modes and operational impact, make the design visible through diagrams and lightweight technical documentation, then turn it into a clear, staged or phased technical approach.

• Build across the full product stack - mastery of frontend and mobile development and APIs, services and data models.

• Own what you build - from testing and deployment through to observability, production support and learning from incidents.

• Raise the bar for the team - review designs and code, share knowledge and help improve our engineering practices.

How we work

We don't believe great engineering comes from working the longest hours. We believe it comes from building the right things, working together and leaving systems better than we found them. We're a small team, so trust, ownership and collaboration matter. Everyone has a voice, everyone contributes, and everyone is expected to help make the team stronger.

We value:

• Make thinking visible: diagrams and design docs aren't bureaucracy; they're how we think together, challenge assumptions and make better decisions.

• AI as a partner, not a substitute for judgement: we use AI to accelerate implementation, freeing engineers to spend more time on problem solving, design and the decisions that matter, while keeping accountability human.

• Quality over speed: we move quickly, but not at the expense of reliability, security or maintainability.

• Collaboration over heroics: the best solutions come from engineers, Product and Design solving problems together.

• Autonomy with support: you'll have the space to make meaningful decisions, with a team there to challenge your thinking, share responsibility and help you succeed.

Why join Little Journey?

We're a small engineering team tackling meaningful problems in healthcare, where the quality of what we build matters in the real world. You'll have the opportunity to influence not only how software is built, but what gets built and why.

In a larger engineering organisation, many of these decisions might be spread across multiple teams. Here, you'll have the breadth and opportunity to influence the product, architecture and engineering practices end to end.

AI is changing both how software gets built and what technology can do. We want to embrace that opportunity - using AI to evolve how we engineer, while exploring how it can help us build better products and experiences for children, families and healthcare teams.

You'll have the opportunity to see the impact of your work on the children, families and healthcare teams who use it. If you're an engineer who gets as much satisfaction from figuring out the right thing to build as you do from building it well, we'd love to hear from you.

Requirements

You're a full-lifecycle engineer; with the judgement and curiosity to work across the whole journey from problem to production.

You're comfortable with ambiguity, open to other ways of think, work collaborative, and able to explain the trade-offs behind your decisions.

We're particularly interested in people who have experienced high-quality engineering at scale or maturity and are excited by the opportunity to bring what they've learned into a smaller team - adapting the good practices rather than simply importing the process.

You'll also have solid experience building and shipping production software, including:

• Fullstack development with TypeScript/JavaScript, React and NodeJS, building across frontend, APIs and backend services.

• Building and releasing mobile applications, ideally using Capacitor or similar cross-platform technologies.

• Building and operating applications in a modern cloud environment - we use Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Docker, Vercel and Sanity CMS.

• Working in environments where quality, traceability and responsible data handling matter - healthcare, fintech, life sciences or other regulated industries are particularly relevant.

• Working in agile, cross-functional product teams, collaborating with Product and Design to turn problems into well-shaped user stories with clear acceptance criteria, technical considerations, dependencies and edge cases.

• Experience with test automation and traceability, building confidence that what's been designed, built and released meets the intended requirements.

Benefits

• Up to 6% pension match (salary sacrifice)

• 28 days annual leave per year (plus public holidays)

• £500 annual training budget

• £200 home working budget (one-off)
• EMI share options

• Enhanced (family & parental) leave policies

Interview Loop

We want our interview loop to give you a good understanding of the role, the team and how we work, while giving us the opportunity to understand how you think and solve problems.

• Screening call - 30 minutes

  An introduction to Little Journey and the role, and a chance to understand what you’re looking for.

• Coding interview - 60 minutes

  A practical coding exercise focused on how you approach problems, write code and work through technical decisions.

• Hiring Manager interview - 45 minutes

  A deeper conversation about your experience, how you approach engineering and what you’re looking for in your next role.

• Systems design + panel - 90 minutes

  A systems design exercise focused on how you understand problems, design solutions and make technical trade-offs, followed by an opportunity to meet members of the team and ask questions.

  About Little Journey

Little Journey was founded by Dr Chris Evans, a paediatric anaesthetist and researcher, and Sophie Copley, a human-centred product designer, with a shared ambition to improve how people are supported through complex experiences. What began by supporting children and families through healthcare has evolved into Trial Flow, our platform focused entirely on participant support in clinical trials.

Our mission is to make patient-centric participation the foundation of better research. We believe better support leads to better participation, and better participation leads to better research. As clinical trials become more complex, Trial Flow helps participants, families and sites navigate what is being asked of them, reducing avoidable burden and supporting better adherence, retention and trial outcomes.

Today, Little Journey is a Series A company with a team of around 30 to 40 people, working with pharmaceutical companies on clinical trials around the world. We care deeply about the people our work ultimately supports, and that shapes how we work together. We value honesty and integrity, trust people to take accountability, and make time to reflect, learn and improve.

Diversity & Inclusion

We encourage people from all walks of life to apply and strive to eliminate unconscious bias in our recruitment process. We do not discriminate on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran or parental status or disability. We encourage candidates from underrepresented groups to apply. If you need adjustments made to our application process, to help accommodate any disabilities, please let us know on [email protected]