Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer

London (hybrid)

90k to 105k

We’re partnering with an ambitious London-based payments start-up looking to hire a hands-on Lead Software Engineer to help shape the next generation of their platform as they scale.

This is a high-impact opportunity for a senior engineering leader who enjoys operating across architecture, platform engineering, product delivery, and technical strategy in a fast-moving environment.

You’ll play a key role in defining engineering standards, influencing product direction, and building scalable systems capable of supporting rapid growth within a modern payments ecosystem.

The Opportunity

Joining at an exciting stage of growth, you’ll work closely with founders, product teams, and engineers to design and deliver a highly scalable payments platform using modern cloud-native technologies.

This role combines:

• hands-on engineering,
• technical leadership,
• architecture ownership,
• and mentoring responsibilities.

You’ll be expected to remain close to the code while driving best practice across the wider engineering function.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve platform architecture across mobile, backend, and cloud infrastructure
• Lead engineering design decisions and establish scalable development standards
• Build and optimise high-performance backend services using Node.js
• Drive mobile architecture and delivery using React Native
• Own AWS infrastructure strategy, scalability, reliability, and security
• Work closely with product and leadership teams to shape technical roadmap
• Champion engineering excellence, DevOps culture, CI/CD, and automation
• Explore and implement modern AI-assisted engineering tooling and workflows

Required Experience

We’re looking for a strong technical leader with recent experience of operating at Technical Architect, Principal Engineer or Staff Engineer level, with experience building scalable products within start-up or high-growth environments.

• Tech stack expertise - deep backend engineering expertise using NodeJS is needed, Typescript, familiarity with React Native, and strong knowledge around AWS infrastructure and cloud-native architecture.
• Consumer product intuition for the demographic - consumer fintech experience ideally, but even adjacent experience with consumer apps focused on Millennials and Gen Z would be a signal of the product intuition sought.
• Startup mindset - looking for someone comfortable operating in a small, early-stage team, where they'll help own the tech and will be comfortable currently being without a senior peer to validate decisions against (prior early-stage experience would be a strong signal).
• Architecture ownership - wanting candidates who've made architecture decisions at meaningful scale, so has a profile that evidence of that kind of decision making.
• AI as core leverage - LangChain, LangGraph, MCP, Claude Code, spec-driven development, prompt versioning at production etc., rather than just using AI as a productivity tool.

What’s on Offer

• Opportunity to shape architecture from an early stage
• High ownership and autonomy
• Modern engineering environment
• Fast-growing fintech business with strong leadership backing
• Competitive salary + equity potential
• Hybrid working in London