Lead Software Engineer, Java & Kafka

The Role

We are seeking a hands-on Lead Software Engineer to join our Data and Analytics Platform team who has a passion and prior expertise in building a next-gen cloud based, streaming, data mesh that enables teams to create products at scale and power our application modernization plans. 

Decentralized data is the future and Data mesh is the way we are going to make it a reality. We envision a future where data is treated as a product, distributed ownership fosters innovation, and domain-oriented decentralized data infrastructure fuels agility and collaboration. A Streaming Data Mesh enables our data to become a strategic asset. 

Well-defined data domains and business ownership will be first-class concerns. We will embrace platform thinking to empower users and each domain with self-serve data infrastructure, treating Data Domains as Products. This strategic shift will alleviate the burden on a central data engineering team and cultivate a culture of data ownership, stewardship, and clear accountability. The experience of creating, sharing, discovering, and using data, to be connected, fast, and trusted based on the Data Mesh pillars of Data Ownership, Data as a product, Self-service, and Federated governance. 

We embrace a culture of collaboration and experimentation while striving and encouraging all team members to focus on continuous improvement and learning. We openly welcome diverse perspectives and people who are not afraid to challenge assumptions and prior ways of working. Otherwise, how do we innovate, learn, and grow as a team and individuals? 

How You’ll Help Take Us There

• Provide technical leadership and guidance around test first development model  
• Run workshops and collaborate across teams to design and ideate modern streaming architecture components in support of data catalogs, data governance, data pipelines, and data storage for consumption by consumers.  
• Implement and support products/initiatives from infancy to maturity  
• Requirements capture and product mindset (functional, and non-functional)  
• Be a core member of an agile team driving the team's agile and development practices, writing code and unit tests, working with API specs and automation  
• Lead team and projects to meet deadlines 
• Train, pair and mentor team members 

What We’re Looking For

• 10+ years of experience of extensive Java engineering experience, with 3+ in solution architecture  
• Experience with stream processing using KafkaStreams, Flink or other streaming runtimes 
• Expert understanding of Java, Gradle and quality related tooling, Checkstyle, DependaBot, unit, system and integration testing (TestContainers) 
• Comprehensive understanding of CICD, GitOps and experience with building and deploying pipelines with tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, and GitHub Actions  
• Experience writing technical proposals such a One-Pagers or RFCs for peer-review and discussion 
• Prior commercial experience and familiarity with traditional data technologies (Data Warehouse, Data Lake) as well as transformative capabilities such as Data Mesh and Fabric to define go-forward strategies 
• Experience with data architecture, data modeling, schema design, and development 
• Real-world experience with distributed systems using Apache Kafka and Streaming architectures 
• Experience working with multi-terabyte data sets, troubleshooting issues, and performance tuning. 
• Good understanding of product management, agile principles, and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact, and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt. 
• BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related subject 

What You Can Expect from Us 

• Central Location: based at our city offices near St Paul's.  
• Free Food: We provide lunch each day of the week when the employee attends the office via our vendor Feedr as well as breakfast cereals, office snacks and drinks from our free vending machines 
• Paid Time Off: 25 days annual leave entitlement plus 2 charity days
• Reward for your service: We offer a two-week bonus holiday after completing each 5 years of service 
• Core benefits: Besides competitive standard benefits package we offer private medical (PMI) for family, Cash Plan, health screenings, dental cover, 6X life assurance, critical illness cover, income protection, pension, car leasing (Tusker electronic cars), reimbursement for wellness stipend, interest free season ticket loan and a “Share Incentive” plan
• Tuition Assistance and Professional Training: Benefit from on-demand learning, boot camps, and opportunities to attend conferences 

Collaboration and innovation are integral to our success – it's how we got to where we are and how we’ll maintain and grow our competitive advantage. We believe this best happens in an office environment. Employees in Technology work in the office 2 or more days a week. This approach still allows for flexibility depending on the business function you work within but also helps us maintain a collaborative office environment long-term.