Engineering Lead - Fintech Banking

Engineering Lead Salary: £130,000–£160,000 + package Industry: Banking
We're working with a leading banking organisation undergoing a major technology transformation and building the next generation of its technology platforms. This is a genuine greenfield engineering opportunity within a modern, cloud-native and AI-enabled environment. The ambition is to operate with the pace, autonomy and engineering culture associated with leading fintechs and global technology companies. As a Principal Engineer, you will act as the senior technical leader within a high-performing product engineering squad. This is not an ivory-tower architecture role or a legacy maintenance position. You will combine architecture ownership, deep technical engineering and technical leadership to build new systems and platforms from the ground up.

Key responsibilities

• Own the technical direction and architecture of a high-performing engineering squad.
• Design and build greenfield systems, services, APIs and platforms.
• Lead system design across cloud, application, data and integration layers.
• Validate and challenge AI-generated code, tests and architectural solutions.
• Ensure AI-generated outputs are secure, scalable, technically correct and appropriate for the wider system.
• Define guardrails for AI-assisted engineering and use AI to improve productivity without compromising quality.
• Set engineering standards and guardrails while enabling teams to move quickly.
• Remain hands-on enough to challenge technical decisions and solve complex problems.
• Drive CI/CD, automation, observability, resilience and production engineering.
• Coach engineers and raise overall technical standards.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to deliver robust technical solutions.

You’ll ideally have experience of:

• Building greenfield platforms and distributed systems.
• Owning architecture and making complex technical decisions.
• Working in cloud-native environments.
• Building, owning and operating systems in production.
• Operating within autonomous, high-performing engineering teams.
• Applying strong engineering judgement to complex technical challenges.
• Working in fintech, digital product or large-scale technology environments.

Relevant Technology Experience

• Java
• React / React Native
• Azure / AKS
• Kubernetes
• GitHub Actions
• Kafka
• Kong
• Databricks
• Infrastructure as Code
• Modern CI/CD
• API and integration architecture
• Observability and SLOs
• Production monitoring and incident response
• AI-assisted software engineering tools

This is not a rigid technology checklist. Strong engineering pedigree, architecture capability and technical judgement are more important than an exact stack match.

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