Picnic - Senior Software Engineer
Picnic
Software Engineering
GBP 75k-100k / year + Equity
Posted on Jun 4, 2025
Picnic - Senior Software Engineer
About Us
Our mission is simple: to make the world better friends. Our friends matter more than we think; research has shown that our social health is just as important as our physical and mental health. That’s why we’re building Picnic, a feel-good social app designed for those who want to spend less time endlessly scrolling and more time having fun with their favourite people. We believe that re-calibrating social media away from the passive consumption of strangers’ content towards conversations with friends represents the most exciting opportunity in tech today. Our ambition is not simply to build the most compelling social app on the market. It’s to deliver on the original promise of social media, and build a product that makes the world better friends.
Our mission, vision and product
Our tech stack & engineering principles
Our interview process in detail
The role
We are looking for a software engineer who loves creating products that people want to use. You understand that apps—and code—are for people, not for computers, and always strive to make our app and codebase more understandable and easy to use.
Our team is currently very small, so you will be working directly alongside the CTO. Our product is still rapidly evolving, you will contribute directly to the direction of our product and architecture, making our most ambitious product ideas a reality.
The Senior in our job title does not refer to how many years of experience you have (or your degree!), but to your general approach to development: you are able to think about the system and architecture as a whole, know enough about all aspects of the stack to effectively diagnose issues, and are able to pass your knowledge onto other members of the team.
What you will be doing
Build core product features from start to finish.
Help shape our product roadmap with clear technical input.
Make architectural decisions on both the frontend and backend to ensure we can continue achieving our product goals long-term.
Help to support, mentor and educate more junior team members.
What we are looking for
Commercial experience in TypeScript, React Native, Node.JS and the surrounding ecosystem.
Obsession with code quality and engineering best practices.
Excellent technical communication and organisational skills.
Previous experience in other high-growth startups is a big plus, but not required.
Take a look at Picnic Engineering - How we work for a detailed overview of our stack, approach & processes - we don't expect you to have experience with all of these.
What we can offer you
The Opportunity
We're a mission driven company with strong ethical values at its core.
We’re a small, focused team of 4 engineers. You’ll be able to make decisions instantly without layers of approval & red tape.
We’re very flexible when it comes to working arrangements. We work “remote-first”, but try to meet in person regularly, especially for strategy & design workshops.
You’ll be able to influence the design of the entire system, especially as we scale.
The codebase is built on strong architectural foundations — it’s not a “throwaway prototype”. We always aim to focus on quality over rushing to ship, where possible.
We rely on trusted technology (eg. PostgreSQL, SQLite) and approaches (eg. functional reactive programming, CQRS) where it matters, but are not afraid to experiment with brand-new tech. We don’t need to support any legacy systems.
Working Hours
We work from home by default but meet regularly in person at our beautiful dog friendly offices in London Fields (London, UK).
40 hours per week, 10am-6pm Mon-Fri with flexible working encouraged.
Open to fully remote candidates - timezone preferably within 5 hours of GMT+1.
Salary & Equity
This role is for Level 3 Engineers and above. The salary banding is £75,000 - £100,000.
Read more about our Engineering performance and pay scales here.
We also offer meaningful equity to all early employees, with the option to customise compensation package based on risk appetite (e.g. a lower salary in return for more equity or vice versa)
Our Employee Options (Shares) come with very favourable terms and benefit from the EMI scheme (if based in the UK) which means no income tax is due on exercise and you'll only pay a discounted rate of capital gains tax of 10% upon sale.
Perks
30 days annual leave (26 days holiday + 1 wellness day per quarter)
Remote working (with the occasional trip to London if you are based abroad, paid for by us)
Work from home equipment allowance of £1000 (one off)
Personal Wellbeing allowance of £100 (monthly)
Personal Development budget of £1500 (annual)
Team 'Social Health' budget
Friday lunches (£30 Deliveroo credit)
Epic monthly company socials
Perk 'Drops'
Our last drop included an annual Deliveroo Plus subscription, Heights Brain Supplements and an Urban voucher for a massage.
Self-proclaimed fun colleagues that don't take themselves too seriously.
Apply now!
We strongly encourage women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non-binary people, veterans, and individuals with disabilities to apply. Picnic is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes everyone to our team. If you need reasonable accommodation at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.
The process
We aim to make the process as quick as possible, and always give feedback early in the process if the role happens to not be a fit for any reason.
Step 1: Initial screening
We will review your CV, looking for relevant experience.
We will ask you to answer two questions to judge suitability, as we strongly believe in doing everything we can to not waste your time with an interview if this role is not suitable for you.
The two questions:
What is the biggest technical challenge you have solved to date?
What prompted you to take on this challenge? (eg. business requirements, personal interest, etc.)
What made this so challenging? (eg. complex requirements, resource pressures, management issues, etc.)
If you had to solve this challenge again now, what would you do differently? (if anything)
Please go into as many technical details as relevant—assume this will be read by a senior developer.
Which of the areas we mentioned would you be most interested in working on?
From your experience, do you think there is anything important we're missing or could improve?
Is there anything we mentioned that you'd be interested in learning about?
Step 2: Interview with our CTO
Role suitability interview (30 mins)
We will use this time to talk about your experience and try to gauge how you might fit into the team and our plans.
We'll devote most of the time to finding out more about your technical experience and previous projects. There won't be any algorithmic / "whiteboard coding" questions.
We will mostly dive into the projects you mentioned in step 1, so make sure you re-familiarise yourself with the technical details, even if the project happened a long time ago.
We will assume that you have read our No access and Picnic Engineering - How we work pages, and will give you a chance to ask any questions that might come up.
We want to respect your time, so if we do not feel that there is a fit at this stage we will let you know. We aim to give detailed feedback after the call.
System design interview (~45 mins)
If we feel there might be a fit for this role, we will then be testing your technical communication and architecture skills, given a problem you haven't seen before.
We'll give you a fictional scenario of an app we'd like to build, with several requirements and constraints.
We’re particularly interested in how you can communicate a high-level architecture, focusing mainly on what the required components would be, how they interact, and justifying any technical decisions you would make to implement this.
We will assess this interview based on the clarity of your ideas and communication, an understanding of the tradeoffs you're making, as well as the feasibility of your solution.
Step 3: Chat with one of our Founders
We will then schedule a 60 minute introductory call with one of our Founders (CPO or CEO depending on availability).
On this call we will share more about Picnic, giving you the backstory (read: ramble) behind the company, a demo of the product and talking through our strategy and vision.
You'll also have a chance to discuss your expectations and ask us any questions about life at Picnic, the role, remuneration or the hiring process.
Step 4: Remote technical test (paid)
You will be given a task that represents the type of practical work you will be expected to complete in the role. No whiteboarding!
We will give you a clearly-specified coding task in an existing codebase. This should be achievable in less than 4 hours.
You will be paid for your time (market rates, hourly).
We will assess your completed test by how closely it matches the specification - in certain cases, we may want to discuss your approach and tradeoffs you chose to make.
Step 5: Meet the team
In person meeting with the whole team at our London Fields office over a video call. Get to know everyone personally in 1-on-1 chats (we're a small team!).
Step 6: ......Hired!
To apply, please send your CV & your answers to the two initial screening questions detailed above to jobs+dev@picnic.ventures.
If a different role might suit you better, check out our other available roles at Careers at Picnic