About this role.
Sona is hiring a Senior Software Engineer with professional Elixir experience to build workforce-management products for frontline organisations. The engineer will own features from discovery and scoping through production, collaborate with product and design partners, and work directly with customers. AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Cursor are expected to be a core daily workflow, with the engineer responsible for directing and validating generated code. The remote-first role is open to people based in European time zones and includes quarterly in-person sessions and client workshops in London. The role offers a typical UK full-time salary of £85,000–£105,000 plus equity and benefits.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Cover letter sample
Dear Hiring Team,
I am excited to apply for the Senior Software Engineer (Elixir) role at Sona. My experience owning product features end-to-end, working with Elixir in production environments, and partnering closely with product teams and customers aligns strongly with your approach to workforce-management software.
I would bring a pragmatic, outcomes-focused engineering style and a disciplined approach to AI-assisted development: using coding agents to accelerate delivery while applying sound architectural judgment, testing, and code review.
I am particularly drawn to the opportunity to solve complex frontline operational problems, contribute across product domains, and collaborate directly with customers. I would welcome the opportunity to help build reliable, high-impact systems at Sona.
Kind regards,
Your Name
Sample interview questions
I start by clarifying the user outcome, operational constraints, and measures of success with product and relevant customers. I then propose a thin, testable solution, identify risks such as data consistency or permissions, and sequence delivery so the team can learn early without overbuilding.
I treat agent output as an accelerant rather than an authority. I provide bounded context and acceptance criteria, inspect the proposed design and diffs, run tests and static analysis, and manually review critical areas such as concurrency, failure handling, security, and domain correctness before merging.
I would use OTP principles to isolate responsibilities, supervise processes appropriately, and design explicit contracts around external dependencies. For example, I would model retryable integration work with observable background jobs, idempotency protections, clear failure states, and metrics that make operational issues visible.
I adapt the level of detail to the audience and anchor conversations in customer impact, options, risks, and decisions needed. In workshops, I validate assumptions with concrete scenarios and examples, then translate agreed outcomes into concise technical and product artifacts for the delivery team.
I would establish the current bottleneck and success metric, such as time to first useful schedule, reduction in manual edits, or error rate. I would choose the smallest approach that safely improves that metric, document deferred work and risks, and revisit the decision once real usage provides evidence.
Running a frontline business is an operational puzzle most software has never touched. Shift-by-shift labour costs, compliance that changes by region and by role, and margins thin enough that a badly built rota can sink a quarter. It’s a harder problem than most white-collar SaaS, and yet frontline sectors employ 80% of the global workforce and have received about 1% of the last decade’s software investment.
We think that’s because the problem needed AI, not just better software, before it was solvable. Frontline organisations sit on enormous amounts of operational data. Used properly, that data lets agents take on real parts of running the business rather than just reporting on it. That’s what we’re building at Sona, and it’s early enough that the systems you build now will still be foundational in three years.
We’ve raised over $100M from N47, Felicis, Gradient and Northzone, signed more than 100 enterprise customers across the UK and US, and opened offices in London, New York, Austin and Lisbon. More on working at Sona here.
About the Role
We’re hiring Senior Software Engineers to join our product teams and help build the next generation of workforce management. This isn’t a traditional engineering role – at Sona, engineers are deeply embedded in the product development process, working directly with customers to understand their pain points and turning those insights into shipped solutions.
AI tooling is central to how we work. Coding agents produce the majority of our code, and your job is to direct, correct, and architect – not type every line yourself. You’ll use tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or similar as a core part of your daily workflow, and we’ll assess that proficiency as part of the interview process. To do that well, you need strong Elixir expertise – enough to know when an agent’s output is wrong and how to fix it.
Day to day, you’ll work within a cross-functional product team with significant autonomy over how to reach outcomes. You’ll participate in defining features and scope from PR FAQs and kick-off conversations rather than picking up fully specified tickets. You’ll also have the opportunity to rotate across different product domains throughout the year – scheduling, payroll, HR, staff engagement – giving you breadth that most engineering roles don’t offer.
This role is remote-first for anyone based in a European timezone, with quarterly in-person team alignment sessions and client workshops in London. It’s not a fully isolated remote setup – you’ll need flexibility to travel for the moments that matter.
Responsibilities
Own features end-to-end across Sona’s platform, from scoping through to delivery, including in the mobile app
Use AI development tooling as your primary workflow – directing and evaluating agent-produced code, not writing everything from scratch
Work directly with customers through workshops, feedback sessions, and discovery conversations to ensure what you build solves real problems
Collaborate closely with Product Managers and Product Designers to shape solutions from vague requirements and kick-off outputs
Contribute to multiple product domains across the year, building deep understanding of workforce management challenges
Participate in the product development process – challenging scope, suggesting approaches, and making pragmatic trade-offs between the ideal solution and the right one for now
Requirements
You’re a senior engineer who’s comfortable owning features from scoping to production – not just executing against a spec
You have professional Elixir experience – enough to evaluate and correct agent-produced code in a production codebase
AI development tooling is already embedded in how you work, not something you’ve experimented with once or twice. You can articulate your workflows and demonstrate them under pressure
You care about understanding customer problems as much as solving technical ones, and you’re comfortable being in front of customers directly
You communicate clearly and concisely – adapting for technical and non-technical audiences alike
You’re pragmatic: you can let go of a strongly held opinion when the situation calls for it, and you make trade-offs consciously
Bonus: full-stack experience including React Native, background at a product-led engineering team or high-growth B2B SaaS company, or familiarity with HR/workforce management domains
Benefits
Salary: £85-105k
Remote-first (Europe timezone) with quarterly in-person sessions and client workshops in London
Share options
35 days annual leave (25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days)
Extra day of leave for every year of service
Pension contributions matched up to 5%
Comprehensive health insurance
Enhanced parental leave & pay
Salary sacrifice childcare scheme (Workplace Nursery)
Co-working space stipend for those based outside London
Annual all expenses paid team retreats
The latest Macbook and equipment budget for your home office
Professional development budget
Unlimited free books
Note: this represents a typical salary and benefits package for a UK-based, full-time employee. Exact details may vary based on location and employment type but we try to be as fair as possible to all of our team members. Please ask your contact in the Talent team to clarify the available benefits for you.
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