Software Engineer - Backend
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 21, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 19, 2026.
Who we are
Phorest started in 2002 on a busy salon reception desk as a simple text-reminder tool.
Today, we're a SaaS company and a trusted partner to over 155,000 hair, beauty and medspa professionals worldwide. Our all-in-one software and AI-driven tools help them manage bookings, take payments, market their services, grow their client base and get the best from their teams.
Everything we build helps the salon and medspa industry thrive.
We're also a Certified B Corp, and 25% of the company is owned by Phoresters. When the company grows, everyone has a stake in that.
The Opportunity
We're looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to join our Engineering team at Phorest.
You'll work alongside talented engineers, product managers and designers to build and improve the technology that powers thousands of salons, spas and MedSpas around the world.
This is an opportunity to work on a large-scale, distributed platform, solving interesting technical challenges and building software that makes a real difference to the businesses that use Phorest every day.
Our technology stack includes Java, event-driven architecture and modern cloud technologies such as Docker and Serverless. We value clean code, pragmatic decision-making and continuous improvement, with feature flags and continuous delivery helping us get great work into production quickly.
You'll join a collaborative, supportive team where you'll have the opportunity to influence technical decisions, share your knowledge and continue developing your skills.
What You'll Do
Design, develop and maintain scalable, reliable backend services and systems.
Work closely with engineers, product managers and designers to turn business requirements into well-designed, shippable features.
Contribute to technical design discussions, making informed decisions about architecture, performance and scalability.
Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code, following engineering best practices.
Build and improve RESTful APIs and integrations that support our platform.
Take ownership of features from initial design through to deployment and ongoing improvement.
Participate in code reviews, share knowledge and support the development of other engineers.
Identify opportunities to improve our systems, development processes and overall engineering standards.
Stay curious about emerging technologies and bring a practical approach to introducing new tools and solutions where they add value.
Who You Are
You have 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with strong proficiency in Java and object-oriented software design.
You have experience designing, building and maintaining backend services in a production environment.
You're comfortable working with RESTful APIs, with GraphQL experience being a bonus.
You have a good understanding of JavaScript and modern web technologies.
You understand the principles of scalable, distributed systems and can reason about technical trade-offs.
You care about code quality, testing, maintainability and building software that lasts.
You're confident contributing to technical discussions and sharing your ideas and opinions.
You're a collaborative team player who enjoys working across disciplines and supporting others.
You're proactive, take ownership of your work and look for ways to improve how things are done.
You have a growth mindset, enjoy learning and know when to adopt new technologies and when to keep things simple.
Benefits
Your wellbeing is important to us - we provide private healthcare, 2 Wellness Days, an employee assistance program and a free online GP service.
As part of our Financial Wellbeing, we provide competitive Compensation, an Employee Share Purchase Scheme, Pension, Life Assurance, and Income Protection.
We help you travel by providing a bike to work scheme as well as tax saver transport tickets.
We support the women who work in Phorest by offering 2 weeks leave for Fertility Treatment, Pregnancy Loss and Menopause.
We care for your family and provide Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Benefits.
We grow our own timber! We provide a great learning environment and extensive development opportunities. We run development programs and provide access to many online resources including LinkedIn learning.
Moving house? Phorest employees get 3 moving days.
Want to learn more about Phorest? Check out nothingventured.rocks for our blog and Insights on building an evergreen company from the team here at Phorest.
Phorest is an equal opportunity employer. For this position, flexi-time and working from home is possible. We are also open to remote work. Get in touch to ask for more information or to chat about your future with Phorest!
Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other marginalised folks tend to only apply when they check every box. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch. We'd love to have a chat and see if you could be a great fit.