Job Specifications
Our vision is to give everyone the belief they can make their move. We aim to make moving simpler, by giving everyone the best place to turn to and return to for access to the tools, expertise, trust, and belief to make it happen.
We’re home to the UK’s largest choice of properties and are the go-to destination for millions of people planning their next move, reading the latest industry news, or just browsing what’s on the market.
Senior Backend Engineer II (Java)
Location: London (Hybrid - 2 days in the London Office)
Reports to: Engineering Manager
The Role
We are on a mission to make home moving easier and simpler. Home movers across the UK spend more than a billion minutes on Rightmove each month, and our website and apps receive over 140 million visits monthly. To support this scale, we’re looking for Software Engineers with the curiosity, expertise and drive to build reliable, high-performance systems that sit at the heart of Rightmove’s search experience.
This position is part of a team responsible for the shared search foundations used across the company. The team builds the capabilities, tools and services that other product teams rely on, helping them deliver fast, relevant and consistent search experiences to millions of users. It’s an ideal role for engineers who enjoy solving complex technical challenges that affect multiple teams or the entire organisation.
At Rightmove we work in autonomous, cross-functional teams. Each team owns part of the Rightmove experience and includes product, design, engineering, and testing specialists. As a Software Engineer II, you will help shape solutions end to end, mentor others, and contribute to the technical direction of your team.
To find out more about our tools, tech and people, head to our tech blog.
What You'll Be Doing
Designing and developing new features and platform capabilities using Java 17+, Spring Boot, Elasticsearch, Kafka, Gradle, Hibernate, Couchbase, SQL, and Docker.
Owning end-to-end delivery of technical solutions, from shaping requirements through to deployment and monitoring.
Improving and scaling our Elasticsearch-based search systems, including index design, query optimisation, relevance tuning and operational best practices.
Collaborating closely with other search and product teams to ensure the platform meets their functional, performance and reliability needs.
Balancing product delivery with technical debt reduction and system sustainability, making well-reasoned trade-offs.
Producing high-quality, secure, maintainable code with a long-term mindset.
Influencing architectural decisions and advocating for technologies and approaches that advance our search capabilities.
Mentoring engineers across the team and contributing to a culture of ownership, growth and continuous improvement.
We're Looking For Someone Who
Has extensive commercial experience with Java 17+, Spring Boot and Elasticsearch, including schema design, scaling and performance optimisation.
Has contributed to or led complex technical initiatives involving multiple engineers or teams.
Shows strong problem-solving skills and an ability to balance technical depth with business impact.
Demonstrates deep understanding of TDD, CI/CD and modern engineering practices, including pipeline optimisation and left-shifting quality.
Is passionate about building performant, observable and resilient distributed systems.
Communicates clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Proactively introduces improvements and champions engineering excellence across the team.
Invests in mentoring, knowledge sharing and fostering a psychologically safe, collaborative environment.
About Rightmove
Our vision is to give everyone the belief that they can make their move. We aim to make moving simpler, by giving everyone the best place to turn to and return to for access to the tools, expertise, trust and belief to make it happen.
We're home to the UK's largest choice of properties, and are the go-to destination for millions of people planning their next move, reading the latest industry news, or just browsing what's on the market.
Despite This Growth, We’ve Remained a Friendly, Supportive Place To Work, With Employee #1 Still Working Here! We’ve Done This By Placing The Rightmove Hows At The Heart Of Everything We Do. These Are The Essential Values That Reflect Our Culture, And Include
We create value…by delivering results and building trust with partners and consumers.
We think bigger…by acting with curiosity and setting bold aspirations.
We care deeply…by being real, having fun, and valuing diversity.
We move together…by being one team - internally collaborative, externally competitive.
We make a difference…by focusing on delivering measurable impact.
We believe in careers that open doors and help our team develop by providing an open and inclusive work environment, offering ongoing training opportunities, and supporting charity fundraising events. And with 88% of Ri