Software Engineer

Permanent Full Time | Hybrid | Gateshead | £40,000–£50,000 depending on experience

The Opportunity

We’re hiring Software Engineers to join our team at Vertu Motors Plc. — a business that buys and sells cars, parts, and time across 190+ dealerships nationwide, supported by technology built and maintained by a tight-knit team of engineers.

The problems we solve are real and close to the surface: how do customers find the right vehicle, how do our 7,500+ colleagues get the information they need at the right moment, and how does a business running at £4bn annual revenue stay operationally sharp? We build the systems that answer those questions — across customer-facing platforms, colleague-enabling tools, and business efficiency software.

This is a role for engineers who want breadth. Our team operates across the full stack, across multiple languages, and across cloud infrastructure. There are no silos here. You’ll write backend services in Go and C#, build TypeScript frontends, script in Python, deploy to AWS, and work with AI-assisted tooling as a genuine part of how you develop day to day. We move fast, ship frequently, and learn from what we build.

We’re open to candidates at different points in their careers — the salary range reflects that. What matters more than years of experience is whether you bring curiosity, technical range, and the ability to contribute as part of a team.

This role is hybrid. The successful candidate will be ideally based in the Northeast and will be working approximately three days per week at our head office in Gateshead. We are open to considering fully remote candidates for the right person, with the expectation that they would travel to our head office in Gateshead at least once a month.

What You’ll Work On

Your first 30 days will be about understanding the codebase, the team’s rhythm, and the business context behind what we build — getting familiar with how we ship software and where you can start adding value alongside the rest of the team. By 90 days, you’ll be contributing to features and fixes across our product areas, pairing with teammates, and developing a clear picture of how the systems fit together. At six months, you’ll be actively contributing to various parts of the team’s code estate — picking up work across the stack, supporting each other’s delivery, and helping us ship with confidence.

This is a team role through and through. We pair, review each other’s code, and solve problems together. Psychological safety is non-negotiable — there are no silly questions, no heroics, no single points of failure.

What We’re Looking For

• AI-assisted development: You’re already using tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, or Cursor as part of how you work. This is part of our day-to-day workflow, not a future aspiration.
• AI product integration: Experience embedding AI capabilities directly into a product — whether that’s LLM-powered features, AI APIs, agents, or similar.
• Robotics and/or automation experience: You have worked on products in the robotics or automation space — whether that’s process automation, robotic process automation (RPA), physical robotics systems, or similar. This is a core part of the work we do and direct experience is required.
• Cloud experience: Hands-on work with AWS or Azure — deploying, managing, and troubleshooting services in production environments.
• Polyglot mindset: Comfort working across multiple languages. Our stack is Golang, C#, TypeScript, and Python. You don’t need to be fluent in all of them, but you need to be the kind of engineer who picks up new languages with confidence and switches between them without friction.
• Full stack delivery: Experience working across the stack — frontend, backend, APIs, and data. Exposure to serverless technologies (Lambda, event-driven architectures, or equivalent) is expected.
• Executable and tooling development: Experience writing standalone tools, CLI utilities, background workers, or scripts — the kind of engineering that goes beyond web applications.
• Database experience: SQL (Aurora PostgreSQL/RDS) or no SQL (DynamoDB)
• Data engineering: Experience with data integration, pipelines, or data platform work
• Application modernisation: Breaking apart monoliths, containerisation, or event-driven refactoring

The Reality

We operate in a high-volume, low-margin industry where reliability and speed both matter. Our software directly affects how dealerships run, how colleagues do their jobs, and how customers experience buying a vehicle. The work has stakes, and we take that seriously — but we don’t let it tip into anxiety. We keep cycles short, get feedback quickly, and improve incrementally.

You’ll be expected to understand the why behind what you’re building, communicate clearly when things are unclear, and flag problems early. We’d rather hear about an issue on day two than discover it on day ten.

About Vertu Motors Plc.

Twenty years under the same leadership team has given us genuine stability and a clear direction. We recently completed a significant “One Vertu” transformation, consolidating Bristol Street Motors and Macklin Motors into a single unified platform — a major engineering undertaking that’s still delivering change. Our technology mission is simple to describe and hard to execute: understand complexity, deliver simplicity.

We are proud to be the Motor Retailer who invests more in our colleagues’ personal development than any other. If you are successful, you can look forward to ongoing training opportunities that provide you with the right career path, career progression, and a range of benefits you would expect from an employer of choice, including:

• 25 days holiday rising with length of service, plus bank holidays
• Access to our online rewards platform, giving you cash back and discounts for multiple retailers
• Preferential Service Rates
• Colleague Purchase Scheme
• Share Incentive Scheme
• Pension
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity

If your application is successful, we will need to complete employment checks prior to you starting with us. Your role will include verifying your recent employment, credit history, and a criminal record check.

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