Staff Engineer – Java
London, UK (Hybrid – 3 days per week in office + occasional site visits)
Permanent
Full‑time, 40 hours per week
Up to £80,000 + benefits
About the Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Engineer with strong hands‑on expertise across Java (17+), Spring Boot, Cloud Engineering, Automation Testing, CI/CD, and Kafka. This is both a delivery and technical‑leadership position, requiring excellent engineering fundamentals combined with design/architecture experience.
You’ll work closely with cross‑functional teams to build scalable, modern, cloud‑native systems that support large‑scale digital platforms. The role includes mentoring, setting engineering standards, and championing best practices.
Key Responsibilities
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Design, build and maintain high‑quality backend services using Java 17+ and Spring Boot.
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Lead technical design discussions and contribute to architecture decisions.
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Implement strong automation testing practices (unit, integration, contract, performance).
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Develop cloud‑native solutions on Azure or AWS using CI/CD and DevOps tooling.
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Build event‑driven systems using Kafka, including schema evolution and resilient consumer patterns.
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Mentor engineers and support best practice across coding, testing, and delivery.
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Contribute to roadmap planning, technical direction, and continuous improvement initiatives.
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Promote clean architecture, secure coding, observability, and engineering excellence.
Essential Skills & Experience
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Java 17+, Spring Boot, and modern backend engineering.
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Strong automation testing experience.
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Solid experience with Kafka and event‑driven architectures.
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Cloud engineering with Azure or AWS, CI/CD pipelines, containers, IaC exposure.
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Strong understanding of architecture patterns: SOLID, Clean/Hexagonal Architecture, CQRS, resilience patterns.
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Experience with DevOps principles and continuous delivery environments.
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Exposure to mentoring/coaching other engineers.
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Strong communication skills across technical and non‑technical audiences.
Desirable Experience
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Experience in large‑scale digital platforms or complex enterprise environments.
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Test automation frameworks (Playwright, Selenium, etc.).
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Experience with NoSQL, caching (Redis), or enterprise integrations.
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Familiarity with Java‑adjacent tooling or light frontend literacy (TypeScript/React).