Senior Software Engineer - Universal Search (Java)

Location: Manchester, UK; hybrid work with at least three days per week in the office. Applicants must be authorised to work in the UK. Visa sponsorship is not available. The role may require Non-Police Personnel Vetting up to level 3.

Company

hirify.global builds scalable software and data systems that help first responders, communities, and governments improve safety and quality of life.

What you will do

• Lead the design and delivery of third-party search and data-provider integrations, including authentication, request mapping, partial responses, error handling, and result normalisation.
• Evolve real-time query pipelines using AWS Lambda and WebSockets to stream query state, read status, and partial results to CAD and RMS clients.
• Extend configuration-driven, versioned platform capabilities for departments, agencies, and state systems across environments.
• Review Java services, Lambda functions, and React micro-frontends for resilience, data handling, and contract quality.
• Coordinate releases across CAD, RMS, OnScene, and multiple product teams; manage dependencies, feature flags, and rollout risk.
• Improve observability and operational resilience through tracing, Datadog metrics, alerting, RCA, runbooks, on-call support, and secure handling of PII and criminal justice data.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with the ability to lead large, ambiguous initiatives and influence decisions beyond the immediate team.
• Strong proficiency in modern Java 17+ (ideally Java 21) and Spring Boot, plus production-ready full-stack development with React and TypeScript.
• Significant experience integrating third-party systems through REST, SOAP/XML, message queues, and other varied protocols and formats, including unreliable upstreams, partial results, and inconsistent data.
• Experience building WebSocket-based real-time systems, including connection lifecycle, session management, multi-instance scaling, reconnection, delivery guarantees, and live updates for web and mobile clients.
• Hands-on AWS experience with Lambda, Secrets Manager, AppConfig, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, and CloudWatch; experience with MySQL and Redis.
• Strong understanding of data mapping and normalisation, resilience patterns, system design, scalable services and APIs, CI/CD, containers, Kubernetes, and integration-first testing with tools such as Testcontainers and LocalStack.
• Experience leading multi-engineer projects, identifying dependencies early, delivering in ambiguity, and owning complex debugging and design reviews.
• Effective use of AI-assisted development and code review tooling, including Claude Code, without reducing quality or security standards.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, clear technical documentation, stakeholder influence, mentorship, and technical leadership.

Nice to have

• Experience with public safety or criminal justice data systems, including PNC, NCIC, state message switches, or NIEM.
• Experience with micro-frontends, Module Federation, OpenAPI-driven contract and code generation, Terraform or other Infrastructure-as-Code, and Datadog.
• Knowledge of security practices for sensitive data, including authorisation, auditability, encryption, PII handling, and data residency.
• Experience owning platform capabilities used by multiple teams, tenants, or jurisdictions.

Culture & Benefits

• 28 days of holiday plus UK bank holidays; private medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents.
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, a ramp-back programme, income protection at 75% of salary, and death-in-service cover at four times salary.
• Nest pension with a 3% employer contribution, gym reimbursement, home-office equipment allowance, and fully covered Spring Health membership.
• AI tooling including Claude Code Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise licences, plus a performance-based bonus.
• Paid one-month sabbatical after five years, biannual hackathons, and a learning budget.
• Work requires participation in on-call activities and adherence to company security policies and protection of electronic information resources.