Position Responsibilities

- Set the technical direction for the design, development, testing, delivery, and continuous improvement of full-stack business applications.
- Lead the design of user interfaces, databases, APIs, and server‑side logic, ensuring coherent end‑to‑end architecture.
- Establish disciplined coding practices, design patterns, automation, and semantic versioning standards that enable agility and high‑quality delivery at scale.
- Create and review detailed system design specifications that guide development across multiple workstreams and teams.
- Define automated testing strategies and quality gates to ensure solutions meet established standards and user requirements.
- Direct investigative spikes to reduce technical uncertainty and risk, and make the resulting architectural decisions.
- Lead root‑cause analysis for complex, cross‑system defects and drive systemic improvements in efficiency, reliability, and maintainability.
- Own the technical debt and modernization roadmap for the area and build support for the investment needed to deliver it.
- Facilitate ideation, prototyping, and design sessions, documenting decisions and outcomes.
- Set documentation standards for architecture decision records, runbooks, deployment, maintenance, and support, while ensuring effective knowledge transfer.
- Lead peer‑review practices and mentor engineers at different career levels to strengthen technical capability across the organization.
- Represent the team’s technical position in architecture forums and with senior stakeholders and governance bodies.

Required Qualifications

- 10+ years of experience as a Full Stack Software Engineer,



including demonstrated experience leading technical delivery across multiple teams and owning solutions from design through production support.
- Expertise in a significant range of the technologies listed below, with working knowledge across others. Candidates are not expected to have experience with every item; recognized depth in several areas and sound judgement in selecting appropriate technologies are most important.
- Languages and runtimes: Java, TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, C#, .NET, and SQL.
- Back‑end frameworks: Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Data JPA/Hibernate, and NestJS or Express.js.
- Front‑end development: React, micro‑frontends, enterprise component or design libraries, CSS, Tailwind, SCSS, and React state management and data fetching.
- Architecture and design: Distributed systems, event‑driven and asynchronous patterns, domain‑driven design, API lifecycle and versioning, and resilience and failure‑mode design.
- Integration and APIs: Microservices, REST APIs/OpenAPI, Backend‑for‑Frontend, Azure API Management, and Azure Event Hubs or Service Bus.
- Data and storage: Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB or MongoDB, Redis, Flyway or similar database migration tooling, and data modelling at scale.
- Cloud and platform: Microsoft Azure, Kubernetes/AKS, Docker and containers, Terraform, Helm or Kustomize.
- Build and CI/CD: Maven or Gradle, npm or pnpm, Git/GitHub,



GitHub Actions, and release and change management.
- Testing and quality: JUnit, Jest or Vitest, Playwright or Selenium, Bruno or REST Assured, SonarQube, and test strategy definition.
- Security and identity: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, OWASP secure coding, dependency and CVE management tools such as Snyk, PII and data protection, and threat modelling.
- Observability: Current Relic or Application Insights, structured logging and tracing, and SLI/SLO definition.
- AI‑assisted engineering: GitHub Copilot or equivalent tools, prompt and context engineering, and responsible‑use standards.
- Proven experience defining application and service architecture and influencing architectural decisions beyond your immediate team.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex technical programs across multiple teams with competing priorities and interdependencies.
- A track record of establishing engineering standards or best practices adopted beyond your immediate squad.
- Experience mentoring and supporting the growth of engineers, including senior engineers.
- Deep knowledge of Agile and DevOps principles, with practices that emphasize testing, continuous integration, and rapid, safe releases.
- Expert‑level foundation in data structures, algorithms, and object‑oriented design.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical vision, options, trade‑offs, and outcomes to engineers, senior stakeholders, and non‑technical audiences.
- Sound judgement and accountability when making consequential decisions with incomplete information.

Preferred Qualifications

- Front‑end and digital experience: Next.js

📌 Lead Full Stack Engineer (South-West Oxford)
🏢 Company 1 The Manufacturers Life Insurance
📍 South-West Oxford