Senior Software Development Engineer - Elasticsearch (Contract)

About Us at GoCardless

GoCardless is a global bank payment company. Over 100,000 businesses, from start-ups to household names, use GoCardless to collect and send payments through direct debit, real-time payments and open banking. 

GoCardless processes US$130bn+ of payments annually, across 30+ countries; helping customers collect and send both recurring and one-off payments, without the chasing, stress or expensive fees. We use AI-powered solutions to improve payment success and reduce fraud. And, with open banking connectivity to over 2,500 banks, we help our customers make faster, more informed decisions.

We are headquartered in the UK with offices in London and Leeds, and additional locations in Australia, France, Ireland, Latvia, Portugal and the United States.

At GoCardless, we're all about supporting you! We’re committed to making our hiring process inclusive and accessible. If you need extra support or adjustments, reach out to your Talent Partner — we’re here to help! 

And remember: we don’t expect you to meet every single requirement. If you’re excited by this role, we encourage you to apply!

The role

This position is a day rate contract role that will last for 3 months, with the possibility of extending to 6 months. You will lead the engineering work that underpins search in our merchant dashboard — the primary interface through which thousands of businesses manage their customers and payments on GoCardless.

Search is a critical workflow for our merchants. Whether they’re locating a specific customer, tracking down a payment, or reconciling transactions, they rely on search to get to the right information quickly. You will design and implement a robust, high-quality search solution that meets these needs: relevant, fast, and resilient at scale.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will work closely with our Product Engineering and Platform teams, contributing production-ready code and pairing with engineers throughout the engagement. A key measure of success will be how well-equipped the team is to maintain and evolve the system after you leave.

What you bring  

• Deep hands-on experience building and operating Elasticsearch clusters in production environments, and you’re comfortable working across the full stack from cluster configuration through to Query DSL and index design
• Operational maturity — you design with observability in mind from the outset and know how to monitor cluster health, detect and respond to failures
• Cloud platform experience — you have worked with managed Elasticsearch deployments on a major cloud provider and understand what changes when moving away from self-managed infrastructure
• A track record of leaving teams more capable — through documentation, code review, or targeted workshops, you make complex systems understandable to engineers who will maintain them after you move on
• Strong programming skills in Ruby

Salary: £600 per day

The Good Stuff!

• Wellbeing: Dedicated support and medical cover to keep you healthy.
• Work Away Scheme: Work from anywhere for up to 90 days in any 12-month period.
• Hybrid Working: Our hybrid model offers flexibility, with in-office days determined by your team.
• Equity: All permanently employed GeeCees get equity to share in our success.
• Parental leave: Tailored leave to support your life's great adventure.
• Time off: Annual holiday leave based on your location, supplemented by 3 volunteer days and 4 wellness days.

Life at GoCardless

We're an organisation defined by our values; We start with why before we begin any project, to ensure it’s aligned with our mission. We make it happen, working with urgency and taking personal accountability for getting things done. We act with integrity, always. We care deeply about what we do and we know it's essential that we be humble whilst we do it. Our Values form part of the GoCardless DNA, and are used to not only help us nurture and develop our culture, but to deliver impactful work that will help us to achieve our vision.

Diversity & Inclusion

We’re building the payment network of the future, and to achieve our goal, we need a diverse team with a range of perspectives and experiences. As of July 2024, here’s where we stand:

• 45% identify as women 
• 23% identify as Black, Asian, Mixed, or Other 
• 10% identify as LGBTQIA+ 
• 9% identify as neurodiverse 
• 2% identify as disabled 

If you want to learn more, you can read about our Employee Resource Groups and objectives here as well as our latest D&I Report 

Sustainability at GoCardless

We’re committed to reducing our environmental impact and leaving a sustainable world for future generations. As co-founders of the Tech Zero coalition, we’re working towards a climate-positive future. Check out our sustainability action plan here. 

Find out more about Life at GoCardless via X, Instagram and LinkedIn.