Description
This role shapes the end-to-end design and delivery of resilient cloud-native data platforms and microservices. You'll set technical direction across modernisation of legacy estates while staying close enough to the code to unblock teams and strengthen engineering quality in Java and distributed system design. The focus spans high-performance data pipelines, event-driven integration and production-ready operational standards in a regulated environment. Success means services that are scalable, observable and secure with clear roadmaps that reduce risk and disruption to live operations.
Responsibilities:
- Own solution architecture for high-performance data pipelines and microservices including resilience, scalability, latency, observability and security
- Define modernisation roadmaps across re-platforming, refactoring and microservices decomposition with minimal disruption to live services
- Establish engineering standards for API design, event-driven integration, data modelling, testing strategy, CI/CD and operational readiness
- Manage technical debt through clear prioritisation and measurable outcomes
- Architect, design and build core services using Java (8+), Spring Boot 3, JPA and PostgreSQL (or other RDBMS) using event streaming patterns
- Deliver real-time processing implementations using Apache Flink and/or Apache Beam where appropriate
- Partner with engineers on code reviews, pair debugging, performance tuning and production incident resolution
- Own operational excellence on GCP across monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, reliability improvements and cost optimisation
Requirements:
- Bring substantial software engineering experience designing and delivering distributed systems and data-intensive applications
- Demonstrate recent hands-on Java engineering expertise using Spring Boot with REST and event-driven services
- Apply proven system design across microservices patterns, asynchronous messaging, idempotency, consistency models, caching, rate limiting and failure handling
- Show strong SQL capability including performance tuning and working effectively with ORM frameworks such as JPA/Hibernate
- Deliver cloud-native solutions on GCP or an equivalent cloud platform with the ability to translate patterns and services
- Troubleshoot across application, data, infrastructure and performance layers to restore service quickly and prevent recurrence
- Communicate architecture decisions clearly and connect them to business priorities and operational constraints
- Coach and mentor engineers across levels to strengthen craftsmanship, accountability and continuous improvement