Location: Remote

Salary: £55,000 - £60,000

About us

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. 

We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Where data guides progress without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded why they got into education every day. 

Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 12,000 schools and trusts. Giving time and power back to staff, turning data into clear, actionable insights, and supporting happier working days. 

At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education everyday: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn. 

About the role

We are looking for a skilled and enthusiastic Product Engineer to join our Engineering team and help us advance the development of the company's core systems, processes, and auxiliary services. As a Product Engineer, you'll be a strong contributor within the team, responsible for developing and maintaining features and components of Arbor products and core systems. It’s a broad and exciting role, so we’re looking for someone up for a challenge - if you’re a keen problem solver and experienced with PHP, this is the role for you.

Core responsibilities

• Contribute to the successful delivery of impactful features utilising agentic tooling (e.g., Claude, Cursor), directly advancing Arbor products.
• Collaborate on evolving our agentic ecosystem by encoding domain knowledge, building reusable skills/agents, and defining robust system guardrails.
• Take ownership for quality/testing for new and existing features, ensuring good coverage and reliability standards.
• Identify, investigate, and resolve system bugs and issues using strong problem-solving skills and growing system knowledge.
• Produce well-architected and efficient changes by leveraging established design patterns and agentic frameworks.
• Collaborate closely with the Engineering Manager, Tech Lead, QE, DevOps and Product Managers to address and own feature requests.
• Actively participate in team ceremonies and support the implementation of strategies to improve product quality and ways of working.
• Support the Tech Lead and Senior Engineers in technical debt identification, reduction and implementing technical roadmap solutions.
• Foster knowledge transfer within the team, ensuring clear communication and offering guidance to junior engineers.
• Actively participate in tech talks, workshops, and team-based learning initiatives

Requirements

About you

• Demonstrated background in software development, preferably within an AI-first environment
• Experience of working in a fast paced scale up or enterprise organisation.
• Solid experience with PHP
• Strong examples of exploring and utilising agentic development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude) across the SDLC/PDLC.
• Good understanding of how to interact with LLMs, encode context effectively, and build reusable skills.
• Knowledge of database technologies (SQL and NoSQL) and basic data modelling.
• Proven experience owning and delivering technical projects with impactful results and moderate supervision.
• Experience integrating APIs or MCPs within a service-oriented environment.
• Understanding of outcome focused MVP and agile development processes
• Possesses excellent written and spoken English skills, with the ability to communicate clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• A driven team player who actively participates in discussions and readily offers assistance to others.
• Experience or knowledge of distributed systems, cloud environments, microservices, and containerization.

Benefits

What we offer

The chance to work alongside a team of hard-working, passionate people in a role where you’ll see the impact of your work everyday. We also offer:

• A dedicated wellbeing team who champion initiatives such as mindfulness, lunch n learns, manager training, mental health first aid training and much more!
• 32 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays). This is made up of 25 days annual leave plus 7 extra company wide days given over Easter, Summer & Christmas
• Life Assurance paid out at 3x annual salary
• Comprehensive wellness benefit provided by AIG Smart Health, which provides a 24/7 virtual GP service, Mental health support, Counselling, and personalised Health Checks 
• Private Dental Insurance with Bupa 
• Salary sacrifice Pension provided by Scottish Widows
• Enhanced maternity and adoption leave (20 weeks full pay) and paternity (6 weeks full pay) pay
• 5 free return to work maternity coaching sessions, helping you adapt to this new exciting time of life!
• Access to services such as Calm and Bippit (financial wellbeing coaching) 
• All of our roles champion flexible working and we are happy to discuss what this means to you
• Social committees that plan team, office and company wide events to bring people together and celebrate success
• Dedicated professional development training budget (CPD courses, upskilling resources, professional memberships etc)
• Volunteer with a charity of your choice for a day each year
• Dog friendly offices!

Interview process

1. Phone screen
2. 1st stage
3. 2nd stage

We are committed to a fair and comfortable recruitment process, so if you require any reasonable adjustments during your application or interview process, please reach out to a member of the team at careers@arbor-education.com.

Our commitment is also backed by our partnership with Neurodiversity Consultancy, Lexxic who provide us with training, support and advice. 

Arbor Education is an equal opportunities organisation

Our goal is for Arbor to be a workplace which represents, celebrates and supports people from all backgrounds, and which gives them the tools they need to thrive - whatever their ambitions may be so we support and promote diversity and equality, and actively  encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. 

Refer a friend 

Know someone else who would be good for this role? You can refer a friend, family member or colleague, if they are offered a role with Arbor, we will say thank you with a voucher valued up to £200! Simply email: careers@arbor-education.com 

Please note: We are unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.