Senior Software Engineer

A little bit about us

At Recycleye we are revolutionising Recycling. Our ground-breaking AI powers robots and optical sorters making waste sorting faster, cleaner and more profitable. With our advanced tech, the previously unsortable can now be sorted efficiently and effectively. Founded in 2019, we have grown rapidly ever since, with installations at leading waste management companies across Europe and the US. We are on a mission to help our clients produce higher quality outputs – turning the world’s waste into valuable resource. And our work has never been needed more. Worldwide only 9% of plastic waste is being recycled – every day, we are proud to work on making a meaningful difference towards a sustainable future.

About the Role

Part of a larger product team we're a small software group building the software control systems for waste separation systems deployed in Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs). Our stack spans low-latency Go services, GStreamer video pipelines, real-time Python data processing, Azure infrastructure, Linux systems and Python web applications. We're looking for a developer skilled in either Python or Go who is comfortable working on the entire stack even when that means learning new things.

You'll own problems end to end - from kernel-level performance tuning to the web dashboard a client uses, to the operator interface of our industrial units. Priorities change, deadlines are often tight but the work is varied and always interesting.

What You'll Work On

• Low-latency services in Go - real-time data and control paths that minimise latency and jitter.
• Video processing - building, debugging and optimising GStreamer pipelines; camera integration, encoding/decoding, streaming and capture.
• Cloud infrastructure on Azure - VMs, container apps, deployment, networking, storage, monitoring.
• Linux sysops - provisioning and maintaining edge Linux machines: networking, systemd, containers, performance tuning, remote access and recovery. We use Ansible, Tailscale
• Python - internal tools, operator interfaces, APIs and data pipelines.
• Hands-on work - occasional hands-on work with conveyors, robotic pickers and air-jet ejection hardware.
• Graphical Interfaces - Industrial touchscreen HMI.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years commercial software engineering experience - you have shipped and supported production systems.
• Recent experience taking your own work from design through to production, and the self-direction to deliver it with minimal oversight.
• You are happy to learn whatever is required to tackle varied technical problems, often beyond the scope of traditional software roles.
• Strong Linux fundamentals (or a desire to learn) and comfort on the command line.
• Experience with at least two or three of: Go, GStreamer, Azure (or AWS/GCP), Python, real-time or latency-sensitive systems.
• Proven ability to work effectively in a very small team - self-directing, pragmatic about trade-offs, and able to deliver under deadline pressure without disappearing down rabbit holes.
• Willing and able to travel to operational industrial sites and get hands-on with physical equipment.
• Right to work in the UK.

Nice to Have

• Experience with industrial or embedded systems, PLCs, fieldbus protocols or machine vision.
• Understanding of electronics; Microcontrollers, PCBs.
• Computer vision / ML inference deployment at the edge.
• Experience with databases, relational and columnar. We use Postgresql and Clickhouse.
• An ability to problem solve under pressure when providing second-line support.
• Opinionated about how the team works; Our processes, planning and tools.

What We Offer

• Day 1 health insurance through Vitality
• Unlimited holiday
• £1000 professional development budget per year
• Direct influence over technical direction.
• Work on a product with a tangible physical output. It is satisfying to see your code sorting material on a live plant floor.

Practicalities

• Occasional UK site visits to MRFs.
• Support rota but not 24/7 and never client facing.