picked.ai/hire/software-engineer
Hire a software engineer
How to hire a
software engineer.
Salary bands, time-to-fill, what good actually looks like, and the assessment we put every candidate through. Built on nine years of validated psychometric data from Neuroworx.
Post this role
~30 seconds
Title, level, three must-haves. We syndicate, screen, score, and shortlist. First 50 candidates free.
Post this role for free →
£85,000
Median salary · United Kingdom
£82-£120k senior range
42d
Typical time-to-fill
down to 3.5d with Picked
247
Applicants per role
Series A · public posting
9 / 247
Make it to interview
industry · pre-AI screening
Salary bands
What it costs to hire one.
2026 H1 · base + variable
LevelUSUKEURemote
IC1 / Junior$72-$98k£42-£58k€45-€62k$60-$90k
IC2 / Engineer$95-$135k£58-£82k€62-€86k$80-$120k
IC3 / Senior$130-$185k£82-£120k€88-€128k$110-$165k
IC4 / Staff$170-$245k£115-£160k€122-€170k$150-$210k
IC5 / Principal$220-$320k£150-£210k€158-€220k$190-$280k
Source · 2,847 anonymised offers placed via Picked Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Updated monthly.
What good looks like
Past credentials. Present signals.
01
Systems thinking
Comfort with eventual consistency, capacity reasoning, failure modes. Not jargon.
02
Pragmatism
Reaches for the boring, working answer first. Aware of trade-offs they made.
03
Ownership
Has fought for reliability when no-one asked. Has owned a thing past v1.
04
Communication
Can write a one-paragraph explanation of a complex bug. Can read code the same way.
05
Curiosity
Has a side-investigation. Reads outside their stack. Asks one good question per interview.
Nine years of Neuroworx outcome data on 14,000 software engineer hires says: the candidates rated high on systems thinking + ownership outperform high-prestige-CV candidates by a wide margin in the first twelve months.
Read the paper →
What Picked puts every candidate through
Four stages. Each one written down.
From the Neuroworx item bank · 1,247 items live
01
Triage
CV + cover screened against must-haves. Title, level, language, region, three skills you set. Hard filters first. The model spends no time on people you would not even read.
~12 seconds · $0.12
02
Conversational screen
A 12-minute voice or chat conversation against six structured probes: motivation, scope of last role, the thing they are proudest of, biggest production mistake, what they would build with a free month, why this role.
~12 min · $0.31
03
Role-fit assessment
A scoped task drawn from the bank. Submit a short writeup. Scored against a published rubric on judgement, craft, and pragmatism.
30-60 min · $0.28
04
AI first-round interview
A 20-minute voice interview against six items drawn from the IC3 item bank. Includes behavioural ("tell me about a time"), technical or scenario ("walk me through how you would approach"), and an ownership probe.
~20 min · $0.24
The 1,247 items for software engineer are split across 42 sub-rubrics. Every item has been calibrated against twelve-month performance outcomes from 14,083 prior hires.
See sample items ↗
Sample interview questions
A few from the item bank.
01
Tell me about the last system you owned past v1. What broke first, and what did you do?
Listen for: A specific service or surface. A concrete failure mode (latency, integrity, cost). A fix that names trade-offs.
02
What is a piece of your team's codebase you think is wrong, and why has it not been fixed?
Listen for: An opinion with a paragraph behind it. An honest reason for the not-yet (cost, priority, fear).
03
Walk me through the most recent thing you shipped end-to-end. From spec to production.
Listen for: The whole shape of the work, including who they had to convince. Specific scope, specific dates.
04
What is the smallest decision you have fought hardest for?
Listen for: A real example. They say "in retrospect", and what they would do differently, or would not.
05
Pick a service you use daily and tell me how it probably works under the hood.
Listen for: Reasonable guesses at the boring parts (queues, sharding, cache). They acknowledge what they do not know.
See all 30 questions →
Job description template
Copy. Paste. Replace the bracketed bits.
software-engineer.md
189 words · 3 min read
# [Senior/Mid/Junior] backend engineer · [city] or remote

We are hiring our [Nth] backend engineer. You will own a service end-to-end (currently: [the X pipeline, ~Y events/day]). The team is [N] engineers. [Who else writes code]. [How you ship].

## You will be good here if

- You have owned a backend service in production past v1 and have war stories.
- You reach for the boring, working answer first.
- [The third trait you actually care about].

## What we use

[Languages, infra]. We will not retrain you on a stack, but we do not care if you came from [adjacent stack].

## Compensation

[Currency][low] to [high] base. [low] to [high] percent equity. We post the band because we mean it.

## How we hire

30-second post, screen + assessment via Picked, 20-min interview via Picked, one on-site half-day with the team. We aim to give a yes or no in 7 days.

## What is the rubric

Systems-thinking, pragmatism, ownership, curiosity. Not credentials.

That is the JD. Apply via [link] or just send a paragraph about the most recent thing you shipped end-to-end.

[Your name], [your title]
Full JD template page →
Hire a software engineer.
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Hire software engineers · Picked.ai