Senior Software Engineer

About the role

Disco is shaping the future of litigation with a unique combination of cutting-edge technology and expert professional services, designed to handle the most complex legal matters. The company operates a globally distributed engineering organization with three technical hubs in India, the UK, and the US, where over 170 engineers collaborate to solve complex technical challenges. You will join one of the UK-based teams focused on enhancing the cloud native platform used by legal teams worldwide. The role involves owning complex technical work end to end, including breaking down ambiguous problems and making deliberate trade-off decisions. You will be responsible for shipping well-considered code that directly improves customer outcomes and contributes to architectural design. The position requires active ownership of system health and raising issues in requirements, design, or code before they escalate. You will also invest time in mentoring less experienced engineers through code review and pairing.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Investigate and resolve complex backend challenges across the entire service lifecycle from requirements to production deployment.
• Design and architect microservices systems, focusing on distributed data management and event-driven architectures that scale reliably.
• Operate and maintain containerised software hosted in a Cloud Provider such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, ensuring high availability and performance.
• Work with cloud-based data storage technologies including relational databases, NoSQL stores, and data caches to manage heterogeneous document types.
• Write and review code in strongly-typed languages from the Java family, such as Kotlin, Java, and Scala, to build robust features.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams across India, the UK, and the US to deliver solutions for customers handling sensitive legal material.
• Implement integrations with external systems using protocols like gRPC and GraphQL while maintaining strict security and privacy standards.
• Utilise modern DevOps tooling including AWS, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, Kafka, Temporal, Datadog, and Terraform to support production services.
• Take full ownership of services in production, driving improvements in reliability, observability, and customer impact.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers through code review, technical discussions, and hands-on pairing to elevate team capability.
• Contribute to the AI-first development approach by leveraging AI tooling throughout the engineering lifecycle to accelerate delivery.
• Monitor system health proactively, identifying risks in requirements, design, or code before they affect customers.
• Engage with customers indirectly through code decisions that enable them to process, collect, and search millions of legal documents.
• Ensure data privacy, security controls, and data residency guarantees are consistently met across all implemented features.

Requirements

• Have strong demonstrable experience and passion for backend development with a proven track record of delivering production grade systems.
• Like working together in multidisciplinary teams to deliver solutions for customers in regulated and high-stakes environments.
• Be proficient in designing and architecting microservices systems, including distributed data management and event-driven architectures.
• Be skilled in designing and operating containerised software hosted in a Cloud Provider such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Have experience with cloud-based data storage, including relational databases, NoSQL stores, and data caches.
• Have experience writing strongly-typed languages in the Java family, such as Java, Scala, or Kotlin.
• Demonstrate the ability to break down ambiguous problems and make deliberate trade-off decisions when designing systems.
• Show commitment to maintaining the broader health of systems by raising issues in requirements, design, or code early.

Nice to have

• With petabyte-scale, high-availability software systems that serve regulated industries.
• Writing software for regulated industries where data privacy, security, and compliance are critical.

Practical notes

• Remote if you live far away from central London.
• Employees share in company success through equity RSU grants and performance related bonuses.
• The role is supported by comprehensive health and wellness benefits including private medical and dental insurance.
• This position operates within a cloud native technology stack centered on AWS, containerisation, and distributed systems.
• Collaboration across three global hubs requires effective communication and asynchronous coordination skills.
• The company uses AI tooling throughout the engineering lifecycle to improve development speed and software quality.
• Ownership of production services includes responsibility for reliability, observability, and ongoing improvement.
• The role involves working with heterogeneous document types such as email, chat, audio, video, and native office files.
• Engineers are expected to mentor less experienced colleagues through code reviews and hands-on pairing.
• Successful candidates will contribute to architectural decisions that impact customers handling sensitive and privileged material.
• The position requires strong problem-solving skills and the ability to translate complex requirements into reliable software solutions.
• Applicants are encouraged to apply even if they do not meet every listed requirement, as great candidates may still be a strong fit.