Senior Software Engineer (Backend) — Pay (Payments)

Location: Ireland, Northern Ireland, UK; remote work is also possible

Company

Phorest is a product-led SaaS company building software and AI-powered tools for hair, beauty and medspa businesses, including bookings, payments, marketing and business management.

What you will do

• Own key backend systems and technical domains within PhorestPay, shaping architecture and long-term evolution.
• Design and deliver distributed systems, RESTful APIs and message-driven integrations for checkout and payment experiences.
• Break down ambiguous problems, identify risks and dependencies, and balance reliability, maintainability, delivery pace and business value.
• Lead cross-team initiatives with Checkout, Payments Integrations, Product and Design, communicating decisions across technical and non-technical groups.
• Champion test-driven development, CI/CD, observability, monitoring and debugging to improve service reliability and performance.
• Improve engineering standards, mentor engineers and provide constructive code-review feedback.

Requirements

• Typically 7+ years of significant software engineering experience, including backend depth, technical leadership and meaningful impact.
• Strong proficiency in at least one object-oriented or functional language, such as Java, Kotlin or TypeScript.
• Experience designing and evolving distributed systems, RESTful APIs and message-driven integrations.
• Strong data-modelling and relational database skills focused on correctness, performance and maintainability.
• Hands-on experience with test-driven development, CI/CD and observability, including debugging and monitoring with tools such as Honeycomb, Datadog or Grafana.
• Experience taking complex work from design through delivery and making pragmatic quality, speed and maintainability trade-offs.
• Ability to influence technical direction and collaborate effectively across engineering, product and design in an agile environment.
• Experience mentoring engineers and raising standards through coaching, code reviews and knowledge sharing.

Nice to have

• Engineering experience in fintech or payments is welcome but not essential.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible hours, working from home and remote work options.
• Private healthcare, wellness days, employee assistance and online GP access.
• Employee share purchase scheme, pension, life assurance and income protection.
• Bike-to-work scheme, tax-saver transport tickets and three moving days.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity benefits, plus leave supporting fertility treatment, pregnancy loss and menopause.
• Learning and development programs, online resources including LinkedIn Learning, and employee ownership through a 25% company stake.