Careers
At Digital Native Group, we thrive on solving complex challenges by combining emerging technologies in novel ways. Whether it's developing AI-enhanced health applications, integrating secure video and audio communications into classified environments, deploying containerised platforms into air-gapped networks, or building data governance solutions that actually work, we're always exploring what's possible. We're a small team that punches above its weight, working across government, defence, health and commercial sectors - from fast-moving startups to central government departments, and as specialist partners alongside major consultancies on complex programmes. If you're curious, adaptable, and energised by figuring things out rather than following a playbook, we'd like to hear from you.
Software and AI Engineer
The Opportunity
Digital Native Group is a small consultancy delivering secure, scalable solutions across government, defence, health, and commercial sectors. We're looking for a software engineer who's curious, adaptable, and comfortable working across the full stack - from infrastructure automation to application development.
What You'll Be Working On
Our projects are varied. You might be architecting cloud-native services on AWS one week, building Python data pipelines on Google Cloud the next, fine-tuning LLMs for domain-specific applications, and deploying containerised platforms into air-gapped environments the week after. We don't do routine - we solve interesting problems for clients who need partners willing to figure things out.
Requirements
Typical work includes:
- Designing and building cloud-native applications on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure
- Building and deploying applications on Kubernetes (K3s, RKE, EKS, GKE)
- Fine-tuning and deploying large language models using tools like LlamaFactory
- Scaling AI inference infrastructure for production workloads
- Infrastructure automation with Ansible and Terraform
- Developing APIs and services in Python, Go, or Node.js
- Integrating identity and access management platforms
- Working with secure communications and cross-domain systems
- CI/CD pipeline development and DevSecOps practices
Technologies We Use
We're pragmatic about technology choices. You won't know everything here, and that's fine - we value the ability to learn quickly over ticking every box.
- Cloud: AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
- On-Premise & Edge: Bare metal servers, datacentre infrastructure (networking, storage, IPMI/BMC), embedded Linux, Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson, ESP32, edge computing, air-gapped deployments
- Languages: Python, C, Go, Bash, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Rust, Nim
- Infrastructure: Linux, BSD, Kubernetes, Docker, Ansible, Terraform, Packer
- CI/CD: GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD, AWS CodePipeline, SonarQube
- Databases - Relational & Analytical: PostgreSQL, DuckDB, CockroachDB, YugabyteDB, TimescaleDB, BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, SQLite
- Databases - NoSQL & Key-Value: MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, ScyllaDB, DynamoDB
- Streaming & Messaging: Kafka, Apache Pulsar, NATS, RabbitMQ, Apache Flink, Benthos
- Data Orchestration: Airflow, Dagster
- Data Processing: Polars, pandas, DuckDB, Dask, Ray, Apache NiFi
- Data Governance & Cataloguing: DataHub, OpenMetadata, Atlan, Apache Atlas
- Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, AlertManager
- Security: Vault, OWASP tooling, Trivy, static analysis
- Identity: Keycloak, Ping, FreeIPA, LDAP, ADFS
- Service Mesh: Istio, Kiali, Envoy
- AI/ML: PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, fine-tuning (LlamaFactory, Unsloth), model optimization (Byteshape), inference at scale (vLLM, llama.cpp), LangChain
About You
- Solid engineering fundamentals and experience shipping production systems
- Comfortable in Linux environments and with infrastructure-as-code
- Security-conscious - you understand why things need to be done properly
- Self-directed and able to work independently in a small team
- Good communicator - we're remote-first and async where possible
- Curious about emerging technologies, including AI-assisted development
What We Offer
- Interesting, varied work across multiple sectors
- Remote working with flexible hours
- Small team environment where your input matters
- Exposure to secure and classified environments
- Opportunity to shape how we work and what we build