Java Engineering Lead

JS Careers are partnering with a leading financial institution for a hands-on engineering leadership role, responsible for shaping architecture and delivery while continuing to write production code.

The role

You'll balance deep technical contribution with team leadership on a business-critical financial platform.

You'll be responsible for

• Designing microservices architecture and distributed systems.
• Writing production code and reviewing pull requests.
• Managing engineers and uplifting code quality across the team.
• Driving consistent engineering standards and technical decision-making.
• Managing delivery risk and bringing structure to ambiguous environments.

What we're looking for

• Extensive hands-on software engineering experience with deep Java/JVM expertise, including Java 17+, Spring Boot 3.x, Spring Cloud and Spring Security.
• Experience designing distributed systems, microservices architectures and API-led integrations.
• Practical cloud-native experience, preferably AWS, including Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code.
• Experience with data and messaging technologies such as PostgreSQL, Redis, MSSQL, Apache Kafka and AWS SQS/SNS.
• Previous engineering leadership experience.
• Strong architectural judgement and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience with AI-assisted development or agentic AI integration.

Experience in financial markets or investment banking is highly regarded.

Why consider it?

• Work on a large-scale, business-critical platform transformation.
• Join a global organisation with deep market presence and long-term stability.
• Help drive engineering standards and manage a growing team.
• Exposure to modern AI-enabled and agentic technologies in a regulated, high-stakes environment.

If you are an experienced Java developer with people management experience, please reach out to Reuben Godfrey for a confidential conversation (***email_hidden***).