Vivacity

2 job(s) at Vivacity

Vivacity
Aug 15, 2025
Full time
Senior Full-Stack Engineer Want to use AI to make roads around the world safer and greener? We're looking for an energetic Engineer with a passion for data and web applications to join our team and help us transform transport. Salary: £60k - £80k Reporting to: François-Xavier Decroix, Engineering Manager Location: primarily based in our London Office, with flexible and hybrid working (ideally 2 days per week in the office). About the role You'll join our 7-person cloud and AI team, who are responsible for producing and surfacing insights from innovative transport datasets using computer vision technologies. Your role will focus on the rich web applications which display graphs, analyses and summaries to our users in transport authorities around the world. You will play a leading role in extracting value from the trillions of data points per year which flow from our smart traffic sensors to government clients. As a senior full-stack engineer, you will architect, develop, and own varied projects, guiding technical direction to make a significant impact for customers, helping to make roads around the world safer and greener. You will mentor junior and mid-level engineers through pair programming and code reviews, and drive significant technical initiatives within our stack. About you You bring energy, curiosity, and a bias for action, and you love collaborating to ship impactful software. You prioritise getting to the best outcome for our customers, and take an active interest in the 'why', not just the 'what'. You've written Typescript and/or Go commercially for years and have led major system designs. You can point to large architectural challenges you've overcome and large new product features or capabilities you've driven to market. You prioritise communication, accountability, and attention to detail, and you emphasise the broader team's impact over your own in order to deliver on-time and on-scope. About us At VivaCity, we make cities smarter, safer, and more sustainable using the latest in AI and IoT technologies. We have over 6,000 AI sensors around the world, gathering real-time anonymous data on transport modes, traffic flow, and travel patterns. This is used to gather actionable insights to support strategic decisions to improve the global transport network. All our solutions are community-centric, using 'privacy by design' principles. We pride ourselves on a collaborative, open culture that fosters innovation, learning and encourages everyone to do their best work, whilst building a sense of community and collaboration. Read more about what it's like to work at VivaCity . Requirements for the role: JavaScript, Node.js and a statically-typed language (eg Go, Typescript): extensive experience required Designing & deploying cloud applications: strong ability and knowledge of concepts and modern best practices required SQL or other structured query language: strong ability and knowledge of concepts and best practices required Version control (Git) and command line: strong ability and knowledge of concepts and best practices required Problem solving mindset and willingness to tackle unfamiliar domains Clear written and verbal communication, with a collaborative and open approach Strong sense of personal accountability and attention to detail Your time will be spent roughly as follows: 50% - Proactive technical work (e.g. product development, reliability enhancements, DevX enhancements) 30% - Reactive technical work (e.g. incident response, support requests, code review) 10% - Technical leadership (e.g. coaching junior staff, initiatives to promote best practices, inputting on product roadmap) 10% - Planning and administration This is a unique opportunity to work with exciting technologies for a good cause, whilst building your experience across a wide variety of skillsets. The following would further strengthen an application: Passion for transportation or sustainable technologies Deeper experience with parts of our stack, eg Go, Typescript, react Terraform or other Infrastructure as Code tooling Exposure to Kafka, event driven architectures, or message queues Familiarity with HashiCorp Vault or other secrets management tooling Deeper knowledge of CI/CD pipelines Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment You don't need to have done all of these things before, but to excel in this role, you will need to be keen to learn and comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. If you're close to what we're looking for, please consider applying. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. Hiring process: 30 minute screening interview. 1 hour pair programming interview where you will work together with a VivaCity engineer 2.5 hour final round interview, split into a 60 minute technical experience interview, 60 minute soft skills interview, and 30 minute director interview We know that diverse ideas and perspectives drive innovation and make us better. We are creating an environment where everyone, from any background, can do their best work. We're an equal opportunities employer and all applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, age, or social background. If you need any reasonable accommodations to help you perform at your best during the application process, please let us know. What we offer: 25 days of holiday Flexible working hours and work from home Up to 30 days per year work from abroad Up to 3 flexible bank holiday days 3% employer pension contribution £850 Learning & Development budget £200 total working from home budget Enhanced parental leave Up to 3 'childcare' or 'dependant' days per year Mental health support through Spill Discounted gym memberships through GymFlex £50 per person per quarter team social budget Additional entertainment budget and company parties Office food and drinks Optional Bupa healthcare and dental care through salary deduction Eye care vouchers Seasonal Flu jabs Cycle to work scheme Payroll giving through salary sacrifice
Vivacity
Feb 20, 2025
Full time
We are looking for a technical expert with deep data platform engineering experience, who thrives on solving complex problems, driving business impact, and coaching other engineers. Salary: £75k - £100K Reporting to: Shaun Howell, Tech Director Location: primarily based in our London Office, with flexible and hybrid working (ideally three days per week in the office). About us At VivaCity, we make cities smarter, safer, and more sustainable. We have over 5,000 AI sensors around the world, gathering real-time anonymous data on transport modes, traffic flow, and travel patterns. This is used to gather actionable insights to support strategic decisions to improve the global transport network. All our solutions are community-centric, using 'privacy by design' principles. Our ultimate goal is to make the European vision of a Smart City - one which makes the city work effectively, for the community. We pride ourselves on a collaborative, open culture that fosters innovation, learning and encourages everyone to do their best work, whilst building a sense of community and collaboration. Read more about what it's like to work at VivaCity . About the role As a Principal Platform Engineer, you will report directly to the Head of Engineering, taking responsibility for designing, improving, and maintaining critical systems which transport hundreds of gigabytes per day and trillions of messages per year. A key focus of this role is ensuring the reliability, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness of our systems. Your work will be crucial in our mission to empower safe and sustainable transport around the world through data insights. You will have primary accountability for our cloud data pipeline & underlying infrastructure, including Apache Kafka, Go microservices, a PostgreSQL database, Kubernetes, Vault, and other cloud services, as well as on-premise infrastructure. Your technical expertise will be instrumental in optimizing the performance, maintainability, and operational costs of these systems while ensuring they meet business needs. In this role, you will collaborate closely with the Cloud and AI team, establish technical standards, lead architectural decision-making, and proactively share knowledge with colleagues. This role does not involve line management, but at VivaCity we view principal engineers as leaders, working alongside engineering managers. You will provide mentorship, technical guidance and training to engineers across the department. About you You are a technical expert with a proven ability to creatively solve complex problems across a broad remit, optimize systems for reliability and cost, and navigate ambiguity to deliver impactful solutions. You have a deep understanding of distributed systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure, and you thrive in an environment that values collaboration, continuous improvement, and technical excellence. You proactively and effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical colleagues, earning trust and influence through your knowledge and proactive, considerate approach. You are passionate about simplifying complex systems and seek opportunities to balance immediate delivery with long-term improvements. You continue working on problems, even when you are not familiar with the problem space, and you know when and how to ask for help. Requirements for the role Deep expertise in Apache Kafka (ideally Kafka Strimzi), including broker management, scaling, upgrades, and integration with high-throughput data pipelines. Strong experience designing, implementing and managing cloud infrastructure with a focus on reliability, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness (we use Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform). Proficiency in Unix systems, ideally Linux (we use Ubuntu). Exceptional communication skills, with experience mentoring engineers and collaborating with stakeholders. Proven ability to resolve technical incidents in unfamiliar production systems. Technical and process documentation champion. Experience of operationally managing production software components, including observability, logging, metrics, error reporting, debugging, and live incident management. Your time will be spent roughly as follows: 50% - Proactive technical work (e.g. changes to drive reliability, costs or customer value improvements) 30% - Reactive technical work (e.g. incident response, unblocking engineers, code review) 10% - Technical leadership initiatives (e.g. establishing technical standards, architectural principles, & staff training) 10% - Planning and administration This is a unique opportunity to lead impactful technical initiatives, work with cutting-edge infrastructure, and help shape the future of our systems and engineering practices. The following would further strengthen an application Proficiency with Hashicorp Vault including secret and role management. Proficiency with PostgreSQL (we use TimescaleDB), including query optimisation and SQL proficiency. Proficiency in one or more programming languages (we primarily use Go and TypeScript). Comfortable working with Infrastructure as Code, ideally Terraform. Familiarity with common DevOps tools and CI/CD processes. Proficiency with infrastructure management tools (e.g. Ansible, Chef, Puppet) Experience with internal developer platforms. Knowledge of information security principles, including identity and access management and authentication/authorisation processes. Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment. Passion for sustainability, transport or smart cities. You don't need to have done all of these things before, but to excel in this role, you will need to be keen to learn and comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. If you're close to what we're looking for, please consider applying. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. Hiring process 30 minute screening interview. 1.5 hour system design interview where you work together with a VivaCity engineer 2.5 hours final round interview, split into a 1 hour technical experience interview, 1 hour soft skills interview, and 30 minutes with Shaun, our Head of Engineering We know that diverse ideas and perspectives drive innovation and make us better. We are creating an environment where everyone, from any background, can do their best work. We're an equal opportunities employer and all applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, age, or social background. If you need any reasonable accommodations to help you perform at your best during the application process, please let us know. What we offer: 25 days of holiday Flexible working hours and work from home Up to 30 days per year work from abroad Up to 3 flexible bank holiday days 3% employer pension contribution £200 total working from home budget Enhanced parental leave Up to 3 'childcare' or 'dependant' days per year Mental health support through Spill Discounted gym memberships through GymFlex £50 per person per quarter team social budget Additional entertainment budget and company parties Office food and drinks Optional Bupa healthcare and dental care through salary deduction Eye care vouchers Seasonal Flu jabs Cycle to work scheme Payroll giving through salary sacrifice