Provides hands-on technical leadership across engineering squads, guiding solution design, architecture discussions, and key technology decisions to ensure scalable, secure, and maintainable business solutions. Drives engineering excellence by promoting best practices in coding standards, quality, automation, performance optimization, and cloud-native development. Collaborates closely with Architects, Product Owners, Engineering Managers, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate business requirements into effective technical solutions. Mentors and supports engineers through design reviews, technical coaching, and problem-solving, while fostering a culture of continuous improvement, innovation, and accountability. Plays a key role in delivering high-quality products, reducing technical debt, and ensuring successful execution of engineering roadmaps and strategic initiatives.

• Lead technical design decisions and solution discussions.
• Contribute to architecture decisions and technology roadmaps.
• Review and approve high-impact technical designs.
• Drive modernization, cloud adoption, and engineering standards.
• Identify and manage technical debt.

Technical Contribution & Mentoring
• Coach Lead Associates and Senior Associates.
• Establish / contribute to engineering standards and best practices.
• Conduct technical capability building sessions.
• Influence hiring decisions and interview panels.

 Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
• Work directly with UK Product Owners, Business Stakeholders, and Architects.
• Translate business objectives into technical solutions.
• Participate in roadmap planning and estimation activities.
• Provide technical status and risk updates to leadership.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation
• Drive Agent first engineering adoption.
• Drive automation and productivity initiatives.
• Promote engineering metrics and continuous improvement culture.

Mandatory:
• 10–15+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent capability demonstrated through delivery experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Technology, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience of leading delivery of multiple applications or product streams.
• Experience of mentoring engineers and leading technical initiatives.
• Experience of working in distributed global teams.

Architecture & Design
• Solution architecture.
• Event-driven architecture.
• Microservices architecture.
• Distributed systems.
• System integration patterns.
• Scalability and performance engineering.

Leadership
• Technical mentoring and coaching.
• Engineering governance.
• Technical risk management.
• Estimation and planning.

Cloud
• Cloud-native architecture patterns.
• Cost optimization.
• Platform engineering concepts.

Non-Negotiable
• Demonstrated experience leading technical delivery across complex enterprise systems.
• Proven capability to influence architecture and engineering decisions.
• Experience mentoring and developing engineers.
• Ability to lead technical discussions with senior stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of non-functional requirements including scalability, security, observability, resilience, and performance.

Nice to have:
• AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, etc.).
• Experience in insurance/financial services domain.
• Platform modernization and cloud migration experience.
• Experience working in product-led organizations.