Software Developer

Location: Hybrid

Salary: £31,500 – £42,000

Contract: Full time, permanent

About AaGlobal

At AaGlobal, we deliver high quality interpreting and translation services across the public sector. With over 30 years of experience, we’re proud of our reputation for being thorough, transparent, efficient, technical, flexible and personal in everything we do.

We invest in our people so they invest in our business – and we’re now looking for a Software Developer to help us turn our internal tools and prototypes into properly engineered products.

About the role

This is a hands-on development role focused on building, scaling and maintaining the software that powers our interpreting and translation operations.

You’ll work closely with the COO and operational leads to take internal tools and prototypes and turn them into robust, production-grade applications. The first major project is an existing Python-based translation engine that needs refactoring, hardening and integrating into a wider platform.

Our intended technical direction is to build user-facing applications and workflow tooling in Elixir (Phoenix), with Python retained as a service layer for the translation engine and similar components. You’ll have meaningful input into how this architecture takes shape.

Beyond the translation engine, there is a pipeline of further projects across operations, linguist engagement and commercial workflows, including an existing Elixir-based CRM that will need development work in due course. This is a long-term opportunity to build and own real systems used every day across the business.

Key responsibilities

• Refactor and harden an existing Python translation engine without changing its behaviour, then extend it as a service
• Design and build new web-based tools and internal applications in Elixir/Phoenix
• Contribute to development and ongoing maintenance of an existing Elixir-based CRM
• Integrate Python services with Elixir applications via clean APIs
• Work directly with non-technical stakeholders to translate operational needs into working software
• Own deployment, monitoring and maintenance of the systems you build
• Write clear, maintainable code with appropriate tests and documentation
• Contribute to technical decisions on architecture, tooling and infrastructure
• Investigate and fix bugs in existing tools and codebases
• Support the rollout of new systems to internal users, including linguists and operational staff

What we’re looking for

Essential

• Solid commercial experience as a software developer building and maintaining production applications
• Strong Python skills, including the ability to read, refactor and extend a large existing codebase
• Experience with Elixir and the Phoenix framework, or strong functional programming experience and a genuine willingness to work in Elixir day to day
• Comfortable working with REST or similar APIs to integrate services written in different languages
• Good understanding of version control (Git), testing, and standard development workflows
• Able to work independently, scope your own tasks, and communicate progress clearly
• Pragmatic mindset: comfortable making sensible trade-offs between perfect engineering and shipping something that works

Desirable

• Experience working with LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI or similar) in production
• Familiarity with document processing libraries (python-docx, python-pptx) or XML handling
• Experience deploying and maintaining applications on cloud infrastructure
• Background working in or with a small business or scale-up where you’ve owned a product end to end
• Any exposure to the language services, localisation or translation industry

Appointment is subject to DBS checking.

What we offer

• Competitive salary
• Hybrid working
• Extra annual leave and paid volunteering days
• Professional development opportunities
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Staff referral programme
• Regular social events

This role is ideal for a developer who enjoys taking real, slightly messy production code and shaping it into something solid – and who wants to have a genuine hand in choosing the technology and architecture of a growing platform.