Software Engineering Lead
This job is with WTW, an inclusive employer and a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ+ business community. Please do not contact the recruiter directly.
Qualifications, skills, and all relevant experience needed for this role can be found in the full description below.
Description
Ready to shape engineering at scale? As our Engineering Lead, you'll drive the platforms and tooling that help teams deliver faster, safer, and smarter.
Here at Cushon by WTW, we like to do things a bit differently... our mission is to help as many people as possible to get comfortable with their finances.
Our vision is to bring tech revolution to the financial services industry. Learn more here - , to support us in this mission, we are looking for an Engineering Lead to provide technical leadership for one of our teams. You will help set direction for shared infrastructure and engineering operations - the production hosting, security perimeter, release pipelines, observability, and developer tooling that every engineering squad depends on to ship safely. This is a role that includes Line Management responsibility for your team of 5-7 Engineers with the assistance of an assigned Engineering Manager.
The Role
Technical Leadership
Lead the evolution of backend architecture across our PHP platform, Go services, and GraphQL/API layers - balancing delivery speed with long-term maintainability
Guide API and domain design standards - clear service boundaries, consistent contracts, and pragmatic integration between modern services and legacy systems
Shape event-driven and integration patterns so teams can build independently without breaking cross-squad journeys
Champion automated testing, observability, and production readiness for backend services - PHPUnit, Go tests, Datadog, and safe release practices
Oversee database and schema evolution practices - migrations, data integrity, and performance - in partnership with platform and infrastructure teams
Lead incident response for backend-owned systems - triage, escalation, post-incident reviews, and runbook quality
Mentor engineers on PHP (Yii/Yii2), Go, Security, Performance and Optimisation - raising the bar through design review and hands-on contribution when needed
Support production readiness for high-risk changes - coordinated cutovers, rollouts, and cross-team dependencies at the legacy/modern boundary
Delivery Leadership
Lead delivery of complex, multi-team initiatives by managing dependencies, resources, and blockers
Define and drive technical strategy, improving engineering practices and delivery processes
Build strong partnerships across product, engineering, security, and business teams
Keep teams focused on priorities while balancing technical debt and operational needs
Drive collaboration across teams and lead cross-engineering initiatives with fellow Engineering Leads.
People & Developer experience
Lead, coach, and mentor engineers to strengthen delivery and technical leadership
Stay hands-on when needed, contributing to designs, code, and operational improvements
Enhance developer experience through better tooling, documentation, and onboarding
Support hiring and help raise the bar for engineering talent
Empower teams to take ownership while providing guidance and direction where needed
Qualifications
What you'll bring
Leadership & delivery
Ability to align technical decisions with delivery timelines, reliability targets, and business needs
Expertise in championing engineering best practices while balancing speed, quality, and operational stability
Skill in reviewing and contributing to technical designs that meet quality and security standards
Strong stakeholder management and communication skills at all levels
Capability to coach and mentor team members in delivery practices and technical leadership
Strategic and tactical decision-making abilities
Commitment to creating an empowering team environment that prioritises customer experience and engineering productivity
Technical experience
Proven experience as a team lead or technical lead in fast-growing, regulated environments (fintech, pensions, banking, or insurance)
Deep expertise in at least one engineering discipline relevant to your squad - backend, frontend, mobile, quality, or platform operations - with solid breadth across design, build, test, and run
Track record of owning production systems end-to-end: implementation, rollout, monitoring, incident response, and follow-up
Experience leading technical delivery on complex, ambiguous initiatives involving multiple engineers, dependencies, or teams
Strong architectural judgement - evaluating trade-offs, setting direction, and aligning others on pragmatic, maintainable solutions
Expertise in automated testing, CI/CD, and safe release practices in high-stakes production environments
Familiarity with observability and operational excellence - monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and blameless learning from incidents
Understanding of security, compliance, and non-functional requirements in regulated financial services
Comfortable working across modern and legacy systems - evolving the platform incrementally rather than through unnecessary rewrites
Ability to stay hands-on - contributing to code, designs, and reviews when that is the fastest way to reduce risk or unblock the team
What we offer
Enjoy a benefits package designed to help you thrive, both professionally and personally. You'll receive 25 days of annual leave plus an extra WTW day to relax and recharge. Our comprehensive health and wellbeing offering includes private healthcare, life insurance, group income protection, and regular health assessments, all giving you peace of mind. Secure your future with our defined contribution pension scheme, featuring matched contributions up to 10% from the company.
We support your growth and balance with hybrid working options, access to an employee assistance programme, and a fully paid volunteer day to make a difference in your community. On top of these, you can opt into a variety of additional perks including an electric vehicle car scheme, share scheme, cycle-to-work programme, dental and optical cover, critical illness protection, and much more. xxuwjjq Start making the most of your career and wellbeing with a range of benefits tailored for you.
Equal Opportunity Employer
We're committed to equal employment opportunity and provide application, interview and workplace adjustments and accommodations to all applicants. If you foresee any barriers, from the application process through to joining WTW, please email