Software Engineer Technical Lead

Lead Technical Engineer - Financial Services

Full Time

London - hybrid

Who are Just?

We’re a FTSE 250 Financial Services company who specialise in retirement solutions and right now, our world is moving pretty quickly. With the defined benefit buy in / buy out space growing each year, Just continues to annually grow its business by over £4bn of assets.

We are a purpose driven company with compelling and credible goals. Quite simply, we help people achieve a better later life. We achieve this by providing competitive and innovative products, services, financial advice and guidance to help our customers achieve security, certainty and provide them with peace of mind in retirement.

That’s who we are. We’re a company on a mission: to become a beacon for the entire retirement industry. Because we believe everyone deserves a fair, secure, and fulfilling retirement.

Purpose

We are recruiting for a Lead Software Engineer to act as the Technical Lead and guide the build, configuration, validation and maintenance of internally developed/configured applications & products within a Retail Technology business area.

This role will support with the migration of applications to the cloud (Azure) as a part of an ongoing transformation project.

Job Role Key Accountabilities

Core planning & delivery activity

• Collaborate with Value Stream to define implementation options for technical change (at and above the Epic level) and translate technical change Epics into Features for Engineering teams incorporating security, performance, availability, supportability (including upgrades), maintainability and roadmap progression aspects.
• Lead and drive refinement of technical Features with Software Engineering teams
• Provide peer review and sign off for completed Features ensuring delivery is in accordance with ‘Definitions of Done’ and ‘Conditions of Acceptance’.
• Ensure delivery of technical Features is within governance and InfoSec/risk requirements and complies with relevant architectural, security and Engineering standards.
• Lead the technical planning and coordination of multi-team/complex production releases/deployments.
• Support Engineering teams, where required, with single-team production releases/deployments. Support Software Engineering Managers with root cause analysis and identifying continual improvement opportunities in production release capability and reliability.
• Support Software Engineering teams with technical problem solving, incident resolution and technical thought leadership as required to support progression of day-to-day Engineering team activity.
• Use technical mentoring & coaching techniques to enable Software Engineering teams to gain technical confidence and competence lifting team capability and self-sufficiency over time.

Technical standards and practice leadership

• Evolve and shape, with peers, the Engineering standards, principles, practices and roadmaps to reflect changes in technologies and engineering community trends.
• Encourage, mentor and coach Engineering Team members (individually or as a group) to develop their skills and practices.
• Maintain and refine technical debt backlogs; Identify technical debt reduction opportunities and implement
• Manage catalogue of software library & tooling dependencies utilised within Engineering and influence, with peers, approval/selection mechanisms.
• Support Software Engineering Managers in assessing standards and practices maturity in teams and communicating/educating teams on the current standards and practices.
• Support use of metrics to track improvements and to continually enhance the software engineering process within teams. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver shared goals and continuous improvements.
• Support Software Engineering Mangers to foster innovation within teams and introduce new ways of working by embracing, role modelling and driving a DevSecOps/CALMS model culture within teams.

Technical and operational documentation

• Ensure that technical documentation is up-to-date, accurate and sufficiently detailed.

Maintain competence

• Maintain your own technical leadership competence and personal development.

Skills& Knowledge

Demonstrable skills in the following:

• Microsoft .NET development stack
• JAM development stack
• DevOps, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (Azure DevOps preferrable)
• Excellent verbal/written communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to present and communicate complex technical concepts as simple to understand commercial outcomes
• Excellent technical coaching and mentoring skills
• Sound problem analysis and resolution skills
• Strong knowledge of technical excellence practice and DevOps/CALMS methodologies
• Understanding of Agile delivery processes/methodologies
• Understanding of the products and services provided by Just desirable

Experience

• Proven technical thought leadership and DevOps/CALMS best practice
• Experienced in developing and deploying scalable, secure and highly available cloud applications
• Proven experience of embedding security, performance, availability and maintainability aspects in delivery.
• Experience with IT development processes and delivery lifecycles; development methodology; testing practices; release strategy and configuration management; development tools, and applications across full project lifecycles.
• Experience working within an Agile environment; delivering within defined Sprints; familiarity with Agile principles and ceremonies.
• Familiarity with Test Automation tools and the delivery of automated testing solutions using industry standard technologies.
• Excellent verbal/written communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to present and communicate complex technical concepts as simple to understand commercial outcomes
• Excellent technical coaching and mentoring skills
• Excellent problem analysis and resolution skills
• Strong knowledge of technical excellence practice and DevOps/CALMS methodologies
• Understanding of Agile delivery processes/methodologies
• Understanding of business processes
• Financial Services experience is essential; understanding of the products and services provided by Just desirable

Qualification

• Educated to Degree level (or equivalent experience/qualification) Or Computer science related qualification
• Certified Scrum Master (or equivalent) - desirable
• ISEB/ISTQB Certificate in Software Testing- desirable

Why Just?

We are committed to building a more sustainable business and have publicly committed to reduce our scope 3 emissions to Net Zero by 2050 and our scope 1 and 2 emissions to Net Zero by 2025. We’ve made good progress so far and encourage our people to make small and meaningful changes in their everyday lives, so that we can protect our planet for future generations.

Diversity, Equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key priority for Just as part of our overall strategy and ensuring all of our people feel proud to work at Just. We have joined a number of initiatives including the Race at Work Charter, designed to improve outcomes for employees from underrepresented backgrounds. We also run a Reciprocal Mentoring scheme for employees from a BAME background, those with a disability and those who identify as LGBTQ+. There are multiple employee network groups, which champion issues including race, gender, social mobility and neurodiversity.

What’s clear about working at Just is that we care. We care about our customers, our purpose, our environment, inclusivity, wellbeing and most importantly - each other.