Lead Product Engineer (Forward Deployed)

Lead Product Engineer (Forward Deployed) - Insurtech Scale-Up · City of London (Hybrid)

About the client

Morela is proud to be supporting our client, who are a fast-growing technology scale-up building the next generation of software for the specialty (re)insurance market. They help brokers and carriers trade smarter and faster by automating the complex and structuring the messy. It's a collaborative, high-calibre engineering culture that values curiosity, ownership and genuinely nice people. Our client's identity is kept confidential at this stage and will be shared with candidates as we progress.

First, what "Forward Deployed" means here

This is a hands-on engineering role, not a support or pure pre-sales one. As a Forward Deployed Engineer you sit close to the client, understand their business deeply, and personally build, configure and ship the software that solves their problems. Think of it as product engineering with the customer in the room, you own the solution end to end, from the first conversation to something live and working. If you're a strong software engineer who wants your code to have real, visible impact (and enjoys the client side rather than hiding from it), this is for you.

The role

You'll lead and grow a small team of engineers while staying hands-on with the build. You'll translate client requirements into robust technical solutions, configure insurance products across multiple lines of business, and own delivery all the way to production, working alongside product, engineering and commercial teams.

The technical side

• A strong, quality software engineering background, someone who builds and ships real products, not just internal tooling
• Enterprise SaaS experience and full SDLC fluency
• Comfortable picking up functional languages and a different way of thinking, you'll build in a proprietary, spreadsheet-like functional programming language (full training provided; Haskell or similar FP exposure is a real plus but not essential)
• Building and managing platform integrations end to end

What else we're looking for

• Proven experience leading and developing engineering teams
• Genuine client-facing confidence - calm, credible and unflappable with senior stakeholders
• Independent, curious, and comfortable with ambiguity and context-switching in a busy scale-up
• Insurance/insurtech experience is a bonus, not a requirement

Location

City of London, hybrid - typically 2–3 days a week in the office or on client site.

What's on offer

A strong package including private medical, income protection and life insurance, enhanced parental pay, 28 days' holiday plus bank holidays, company stock options, pension and nursery salary exchange, learning allowance, home-office allowance and a company MacBook, on-site gym and regular socials.

Interested? Get in touch with Morela for a confidential conversation: adam.moore@morela.co.uk