Engineering quality and standards

• Establish and promote consistent engineering practices across development teams.
• Define architectural guidelines and principles that support maintainable, secure, and scalable software.
• Participate in architecture, design, and code reviews.
• Improve development processes, standards, and ways of working where opportunities are identified.
• Encourage a culture of technical ownership, continuous improvement, and high-quality delivery.
• Provide ongoing technical guidance to engineers at different stages of their careers.

Reliability and production engineering

• Take a leading role in investigating difficult or recurring production problems.
• Drive structured root-cause analysis and ensure corrective actions are implemented.
• Improve monitoring, logging, metrics, and wider system observability.
• Ensure services are engineered to meet agreed expectations around availability, reliability, and performance.
• Work alongside Operations, DevOps, and QA to maintain dependable production environments.
• Encourage preventative engineering practices that reduce incidents and improve operational maturity.

Technology environment

You will work with a modern technology stack that includes:

• Java 21 (LTS)
• Spring Framework 6 and Spring Boot 3.5
• Hibernate ORM 6.6+ and JPA
• Apache Tomcat 11
• IntelliJ IDEA
• AI-assisted development tools such as Claude, Codex, and GitLab Duo
• RESTful services, OpenAPI, and microservice architectures
• Event-driven systems using RabbitMQ
• Docker, containers, AWS, and Linux
• CI/CD using GitLab Pipelines and Jenkins
• Application logging, metrics, monitoring, and observability tooling
• MySQL and Apache Solr
• Modern web technologies, including frameworks such as Angular

What they're looking for

You will be someone who can operate comfortably at both strategic and technical levels. You should be able to understand the wider implications of architectural decisions while remaining close enough to the technology to provide practical engineering guidance.

Personal attributes

• Able to think beyond individual applications and consider systems as a whole.
• Strong communicator who can work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable influencing decisions through expertise, credibility, and collaboration rather than formal authority.
• Pragmatic, proactive, and focused on achieving measurable outcomes.
• Enjoys developing the skills and confidence of other engineers.
• Committed to high standards of software engineering and continual improvement.
• Able to act as a trusted technical partner and adviser.
• Thorough and attentive to technical detail.

Experience and technical expertise

• A degree in Computer Science or a comparable level of professional experience.
• Extensive commercial experience developing Java software, combined with substantial experience in a senior technical or architectural capacity.
• Advanced knowledge of Java, including JVM behavior, performance considerations, and modern Java language capabilities.
• Strong practical experience with Spring Boot, Hibernate/JPA, and enterprise-scale application design.
• Experience designing distributed systems and addressing scalability, availability, resilience, and performance challenges.
• Familiarity with cloud-based application architectures, Docker, Kubernetes, and automated CI/CD.
• Good understanding of application security, OWASP guidance, and secure software engineering.
• Experience working with a modern Node-based front-end technology or framework.

Their purpose is to help students navigate the world of work and make informed choices about their futures. They use technology, content, and practical tools to connect young people with opportunities and help them build the confidence and skills they need.

They work with students alongside employers, universities, schools, and technology partners, creating connections that benefit both sides of the recruitment process.