Junior Developer

Junior Developer

Spirax Group, formerly Spirax-Sarco Engineering, is a global thermal energy and fluid technology solutions Group that supports industrial customers in transitioning to net zero. The Group designs technologies that improve the efficiency and safety of critical industrial processes behind everyday consumables, while delivering new decarbonisation solutions that electrify boilers and other process heating applications.

Spirax Group consists of three world-leading businesses: Steam Thermal Solutions (including Spirax Sarco and Gestra), Electric Thermal Solutions, and Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions, all focused on resource efficiency and advancements in global health.

Headquartered in Cheltenham, UK, Spirax Group is a FTSE 100 company with 37 manufacturing plants, approximately 10,000 colleagues in 66 countries, and 110,000 customers worldwide.

About the role

We are looking for a Junior Developer to join the team building the cloud platform behind our connected industrial products, a production industrial-IoT system that ingests telemetry from tens of thousands of sensors in customer plants, decodes and enriches it, runs engineering calculations over the resulting time series, and serves the results to internal engineering teams and to customers.

This is a role for someone with roughly two to three years of commercial development experience who wants to go deeper. You will be writing production code within your first few weeks, but you will not be doing it alone: you will pair with senior engineers, your work will go through review, and you will be given a route into the codebase rather than a sink-or-swim start.

We care more about how you think than about how many technologies you have already used. The platform runs on a broad stack, set out below, and we do not expect you to arrive knowing all of it. If you are solid in one or two of those areas and genuinely keen to learn the rest, we would like to hear from you.

What you will be doing

• Build and maintain backend features in C# / .NET or TypeScript, following the patterns already established in the codebase, with tests written alongside the code.
• Work on the front end: React and TypeScript components and screens, taking a ticket or a design through to a merged pull request.
• Help develop the data pipelines that decode device telemetry and compute engineering values, starting with well-scoped changes and growing into larger pieces of work.
• Write and run automated tests, and treat a failing test as useful information rather than an obstacle.
• Take part in code review, as an author and as a reviewer. Reading other people’s code is the fastest way to learn a platform this size.
• Deploy your own work through our CI/CD pipelines, and build up an understanding of how the environments and infrastructure fit together.
• Investigate and fix defects in the running platform, with a senior engineer alongside you at first and increasingly on your own.
• Contribute in design discussions and stand-ups: ask the question you think might be obvious, because it usually is not.
• Keep the documentation honest as you change things, so the next person does not have to rediscover what you worked out.

What we are looking for

• Around two to three years of commercial software development experience, or a comparable track record through an apprenticeship, a placement year, a bootcamp followed by real delivery, or substantial open-source work.
• A solid grounding in at least one modern language, ideally C# or TypeScript. Others count: if you have written good Java,
• Go or Python, the move across is very manageable.
• A working understanding of how a web application fits together: HTTP, REST APIs, JSON, and a database of some kind.
• Comfort with Git and a pull-request workflow.
• Some experience of writing automated tests, and a clear sense of why they matter.
• Clear written communication and the confidence to say when you are stuck. On a remote team this counts for more than it would in an office.
• A genuine appetite for cloud engineering. You do not need Azure experience; you do need to want it.

The technology you will work with

This is the stack the platform actually runs on, so you can see what you would be working with and learning. It is not a checklist you need to tick. We expect someone at this level to have used only a small part of it. Experience with any of it is welcome, none of it is essential, and we will teach you the rest.

Backend and API development

Cloud and Azure services

Infrastructure as code and DevOps

Frontend development

Nice to have

• None of these are required. Any of them would give us something to talk about.
• Exposure to a cloud platform, Azure, AWS or Google Cloud. A personal project counts.
• Experience with React, or another modern component framework.
• Curiosity about data and query languages: SQL, KQL or similar.
• Docker or containers, even at a hobby level.
• An interest in industrial engineering, energy or sustainability.
• A degree in computing, engineering, physics or mathematics, though we do not require one.

About you

• Curious. You want to know why the code does what it does, not only that it works.
• Honest about what you do not know. Asking early is a strength on this team, not a weakness.
• Careful. You test your own work before you ask someone else to look at it.
• Coachable. You take code review as a gift, act on the feedback, and carry it forward.
• Communicative. Remote work rewards people who write clearly and post progress without being chased for it.
• Interested in the real world behind the data: the steam trap, the pump, the process that the numbers came from.

Support and development

• We are hiring at this level deliberately, and we plan to invest accordingly.
• A named mentor from your first day, plus regular one-to-ones with your line manager.
• Pairing and code review with senior engineers as a normal part of the week, not a favour you have to ask for.
• Onboarding material written for newcomers, including an internal guide to how the platform fits together.
• Time and budget for learning: Microsoft certifications, courses and conferences.
• A written progression path towards Developer and Senior Developer, with the expectations for each level set out rather than implied.
• Work chosen to stretch you on purpose, starting well-scoped and growing as you settle in.

How we work

• Remote-first, UK-based. The team works remotely across the UK, with occasional travel to Cheltenham or another Group site for planning, team events and customer workshops.
• Agile delivery in short iterations, with product owners and solution architects embedded in the team.
• Quality gates in the pipeline, not in a handover: automated tests, static analysis and build-enforced standards.
• Infrastructure as code by default. Environments are described in Terraform and Bicep and deployed through Azure DevOps.
• Documentation as part of the work, not a phase at the end of it.
• No blame when something breaks. We fix the system that allowed it, not the person who triggered it.

Why join us

You would work on a platform with a direct line to decarbonisation: the telemetry and calculations we build help industrial customers find steam leaks, cut fuel use and reduce emissions across thousands of sites. For someone early in their career it is an unusually good combination, a modern Azure estate with real scale and real customers, inside a stable FTSE 100 engineering group, on a team small enough that your work is visible and your questions get answered.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Spirax Group is an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of age, disability, gender identity, marital or civil-partnership status, pregnancy or parental status, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. If you need an adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process, please tell us and we will make it.

If you meet most of what is described above but not all of it, please apply anyway. We would rather read your application and decide together than have you rule yourself out.

Spirax Group is a FTSE100 and FTSE4Good multi-national industrial engineering Group with expertise in the control and management of steam, electric thermal solutions, peristaltic pumping and associated fluid technologies.

Our Purpose is to create sustainable value for all our stakeholders as we engineer a more efficient, safer and sustainable world.  Our technologies play an essential role in critical industrial processes and industrial equipment across industries as diverse as Food & Beverage, Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology, Power Generation, Semiconductors and Healthcare.  With customers in 165 countries, we provide the solutions that sit behind the production of many items used in daily life, from baked beans to mobile phones!

Our Purpose, supported by our inclusive culture and Values, unites us, guides our decisions and inspires us everywhere that we operate.  We support our colleagues to make their difference for each other as well as customers, communities, suppliers, our planet and shareholders by creating a truly equitable working environment where everyone feels included.

Benefits

You will receive a competitive salary (and a discretionary bonus), flexible working and excellent benefits including 27 days holiday allowance (before bank holidays), 3 days’ paid volunteering leave, comprehensive private healthcare, enhanced pension plan, life assurance, optional participation in a Share Ownership Plan, free onsite parking, flexible benefits, and access to a personal discounts’ portal.   We also offer a range of additional support and benefits through our Everyone is Included Group Inclusion Plan, detailed below.

Everyone is Included at Spirax Group

We are passionate about creating inclusive and equitable working cultures where everyone can be themselves and achieve their full potential. For us, that means supportive teams and strong relationships where everyone’s contribution is valued - across social and cultural backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, genders, gender identities, abilities, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and everything else that makes us human and unique.

We want everyone to be able to make their difference here, so we will always consider requests for flexible working.

We know that everyone needs some extra help from time to time too, so we have introduced a range of additional benefits through our Group Inclusion Commitments. These include gender-neutral parental leave, 15 days of extra paid caregiver leave, paid time off and support for anyone experiencing pregnancy loss or domestic abuse, menopause-friendly workplace principles and more. Learn more at www.spiraxgroup.com/en/life-at-spirax/our-inclusive-group/our-inclusion-commitments.

We are also a Disability Confident Committed Employer. If you would like to apply using this scheme, please select this option in our application form or notify our recruitment partners.