At PonchoPay, youʼll do work that matters. Weʼre on a mission to unlock affordable childcare for all parents & carers. Weʼve already processed millions of pounds in payments, with tens of thousands of users and some of the UKʼs largest providers on board, including Stagecoach, Art-K, Fun Fest, and Pebble. Backed by Kamet Ventures, Temaris, and top angel investors. Weʼre building the payment infrastructure for childcare and childrenʼs activities in the UK, solving complex technical challenges around scalable payment systems, funding integrations, and automation. About the job This role is ideal for a software engineer who is comfortable building REST APIs and writing client application logic for the front end. Youʼll be working on the core PonchoPay checkout and automation software. Weʼre still a small team, so a generalist skill set is useful here. Our stack: SvelteKit, Node/NestJS, Postgres, Playwright, TypeScript. Youʼll be a crucial early hire for the company — a chance to directly shape PonchoPayʼs success from day one. As a small and fast-growing team, youʼll also have opportunities to take on ownership, grow with us, and influence both our product and engineering direction. What youʼll be doing: • Contribute to the core PonchoPay checkout and automation software. • Work on our SvelteKit monolith to build data models, REST APIs, and business logic that power product features. • Integrate open banking solutions to provide accounting support to childcare providers. • Write automated tests alongside your code to give us the confidence to ship regularly. • Plan and prioritise sprint work with the product team. • Get involved in cross-cutting concerns that lift our entire engineering effort. • Take part in shaping product direction and delivery — expect to be involved in ideation sessions, user research calls, retrospectives, product demos, and north star metric reviews. Life as an Engineer at PonchoPay • We want, and expect you to grow and develop — youʼll be given the opportunity to do your best work. • We donʼt deliberate exhaustively over all the what-ifs. We focus on being effective, making small changes, then shipping and testing quickly. • We write code to be read, debugged, and maintained by humans. • We put the team first, helping each other out whenever we can. • We move forwards with intent: one task done>ten tasks started. • We use tech debt deliberately when it unlocks speed and learning, and manage it carefully. • We give you autonomy and trust in decision-making. • We work in a hybrid model. We aim to be in the office once a week, but this is flexible. Work Location and Flexibility At PonchoPay, we embrace a hybrid work model. In general, our team aims to be in the office once a week. However, weʼre open to fully remote work or as many office days as you wish. Occasional in-person meetings at our London office may be required. At PonchoPay, you have the freedom to work in a way that suits you best. About you If youʼre not sure you fit the description exactly, we still want to hear from you. The right attitude and teamwork are far more critical than exact skills. Ideally, you will meet most of these criteria: • Youʼre an ambitious engineer who likes to see the things youʼve built make it into the hands of real users. • Experience with modern frontend frameworks such as SvelteKit (ideal), React, Vue, etc. • Experience developing REST APIs with Node (NestJS or similar). • Experience with Postgres or similar relational databases. • Experience with automated testing via unit and end-to-end tests. • You take performance seriously and understand the implications for users on all kinds of connections. • Familiarity with software engineering design patterns. • You take a keen interest in developments in the industry and adjust best practices accordingly. • You are passionate about high-quality, high-value work. • You understand the importance of teamwork and putting the team's goals first. • You are experienced in developing, shipping, and iterating with user focus. • Youʼre comfortable shipping things that are good enough — we value quality, but maximising user value comes first. • Youʼre comfortable with the ambiguity and pace that comes with being part of an early-stage startup but will ask for help when you need it. • You understand the importance of releasing early and often; you value early user feedback over perfection. • You join us in our belief that we donʼt know everything and empower our colleagues to make progress. You might have some of these too: • Experience working in early-stage or similarly fast-paced companies. • Previous experience with checkout, e-commerce, open banking, or payment products. Not sure you fit the description exactly? We still want to hear from you. Equal Opportunities Statement We are an equal-opportunity employer, and we strive to reduce unconscious bias throughout our hiring process. All applicants will be considered without attention to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity status, or disability status. We actively welcome applicants who donʼt tick every box and embrace diversity to build an inclusive environment for all. Company Benefits We have a flexible work culture with a mix of remote and office working. Some team members come in once a month, some a couple of times week. Specific requirements for this role can be discussed as part of the hiring process. Our main office is WeWork, 145 City road, London EC1V 1AZ. We will be building our benefits package further in the future, right now it includes: • Discretionary share options. • 25 days holiday + bank holidays (33 total). • Be treated as a human first, employee second. • Opportunity to grow as we do.