Staff Software Engineer

Job Description

The Stepstone Group is an international job technology business, with over 50 million site visits each month, we aim to deliver the best user experiences and personalisation for job seekers and our business subscribers. Within the Stepstone Group the Staff Software Engineer holds a senior technologist role within a specific domain or technology Chapter. While contributing to the code base, they will define the technical direction, oversee the architecture and ensure the technical quality of both new and existing technologies.  

In this context the successful Staff Software Engineer will be taking technical ownership across 3 Engineering Teams: Talent Profile, Company Profile and Salary Products. They will Collaborate with Engineering Managers to align technical quality and delivery to achieve our domain-specific goals. They will lead on technical initiatives, fostering alignment among teams and while serving as the point of escalation for technical issues and challenges. 

This role also extends to overseeing engineering practices and development across the wider Chapter, plays a pivotal role as a mentor and thought leader, contributes to the growth and knowledge-sharing practice within the broader professional community.

Your responsibilities  

• Lead domain-level technical initiatives, resolving complex problems while staying hands-on in the codebase and producing both detailed technical work and high-level architecture. 
• Collaborate with engineering and product leaders to simplify domain complexity and evolve the ecosystem. 
• Drive technical alignment and engineering maturity across the domain and organisation via the Chapter structure. 
• Mentor and lead the engineering community, improving delivery speed, quality, and performance. 
• Continuously strengthen architectural, engineering, and security health, while nurturing engineering culture and innovation across the domain and portfolio, partnering with Engineering Director, Product Director, Principal Engineer, Architecture, and Engineering Managers. 

Qualifications

• Staff-level engineering background with deep expertise in .NET and React, and a proven record delivering large-scale, production-grade systems using A/B testing. 
• Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems on AWS, including secure development, data protection, compliance, and enterprise architecture. 
• Strong modern frontend expertise: component architecture, design systems, responsive design, accessibility (WCAG), and client-side state management. 
• Hands-on experience with enterprise/SaaS web platforms using microservices and micro-frontends, covering performance (Core Web Vitals, rendering, code splitting, CDN), API integration (REST, OpenAI, Bedrock), and service scalability/resilience. 
• Expertise in LLM-powered web system design (state, caching, guardrails, observability) and strong communication skills for mentoring engineers and setting technical direction across teams. 

Additional Information

Your benefits 

We’re a community here that cares as much about your life outside work as how you feel when you’re with us. Because your job shouldn’t take over your life, it should enrich it. Here are some of the benefits we offer:   

• 29 days holiday allowance + bank holidays     
• Private medical and dental healthcare     
• Matching pension contribution of 4 or 5% (after 3 years of service up to 10%)     
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme   
• Life Assurance Cover    
• Cycle to work scheme     
• Hybrid working model  (3 days working from the office)  
• Volunteering days     
• and you can bring your dog to the office on Mondays and Fridays!     

Our commitment   

Equal opportunities are important to us. We believe that diversity and inclusion at The Stepstone Group are critical to our success as a global company, so we want to recruit, develop, and keep the best talent. We encourage applications from everyone, regardless of background, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, ethnicity, belief, age, family or parental status, and any other characteristic. As a global business we further our DEI and sustainability progress by working with national and international bodies and are proud to have been recognised for our work - both locally and internationally, including:    

• Armed Forces Covenant: Silver Award, Employer Recognition Scheme   
• EcoVadis: Bronze Award   
• Fertility Friendly Employer, accredited by Fertility Matters at Work   
• RIDI (Recruitment Industry Disability) Awards: Inclusive Technology Award 2024   
• Stonewall: Gold Award   
• Stonewall: Top 100 Workplace Equality Index (85)