Lead Back End Engineer

About the job

Reporting to a Software Engineering Manager or Head of Engineering, we are seeking a Lead Back End Software Engineer to be the go-to authority for backend engineering, setting the technical vision, guiding architecture, and driving improvements in tools, processes, and delivery practices. You’ll remain hands-on for critical work, but your greatest impact will come from technical leadership, enabling teams to deliver robust, scalable, and secure services.

With a strong foundation in backend technologies, including Java and Spring Boot, and event-driven systems such as Kafka, you’ll influence systems well beyond your own code, ensuring architectural integrity and high engineering standards across multiple teams. You’ll play a pivotal role in aligning technical strategy with business goals and ensuring our backend capabilities are future-ready.

📝 What You'll Be Doing…

Technical Leadership

• Define and evolve backend architecture to ensure scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Set coding standards and champion secure development practices (e.g. OWASP).
• Influence technology choices, frameworks, and tools to support engineering excellence.
• Oversee improvements to CI/CD pipelines, build processes, and operational workflows.
• Can clearly and confidently articulate risk of technical problems to non technical stakeholders (e.g legal, product owner, designer)
• Leads projects and features to good outcomes, ensuring appropriate engineering decisions are made to factor in technical debt, systems design, stability/reliability, monitoring/observability and business need.

Hands-On Guidance

• Contribute to key backend systems when your expertise is needed.
• Review and refine critical code, ensuring alignment with architectural goals and best practices.
• Provide technical oversight for major initiatives, ensuring architectural soundness.

Mentoring & Collaboration

• Coach, mentor, and develop engineers, raising capability across the backend discipline.
• Facilitate design discussions, code reviews, and collaborative problem-solving sessions.
• Build consensus for architectural and technical decisions across teams and stakeholders.

Check out the full details, including day-to-day duties and responsibilities on our website: mkodo careers

🤩We’d love to hear from you if…

• You have strong backend engineering experience, ideally including Java (Java 11+) and Spring Boot.
• You have proven ability to design and lead backend architectures for complex systems.
• You are familiar with cloud environments (AWS is mandatory) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
• You are experienced in event-driven architectures and messaging platforms such as Kafka.
• You have strong understanding of RESTful APIs, microservices, and distributed system design.
• You have knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases.
• You are experienced in CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and modern deployment practices.
• You are a skilled mentor with the ability to influence technical direction across teams.
• You have strong problem-solving skills, balancing technical, product, and delivery considerations.
• You are comfortable in agile environments using Git-based SCM and tools like Jira or Redmine.
• You are aware of compliance frameworks such as ISO27001 and PCI.

🙌What’s in it for you?

🌴Annual Leave – 23 days holiday, plus all bank holidays, increasing by 1 day per year of service, after 3 years (up to 29 days), Birthday Day-Off, Extra day-off over Christmas, Annual volunteer day.

💰Recognition & Rewards - Annual Performance Bonus and Profit Share Scheme, Tech Loan, Length of Service rewards – 5 & 10 year clubs!

📍Hybrid Working (2-4 days per month office-based minimum) either in our London or Newcastle office;

💸Group Income Protection

❤️Life Insurance

💰Salary Sacrifice Pension, with 5% employer contribution match

🏃🏽Health & Wellbeing - Employee Assistance Programme, 24/7 Smart Health GP Access, Cycle to Work scheme, Bi-Annual Health Check

🌎 Digital Nomad policy – allowing you to work from anywhere for 4 weeks per year.

📚 Growth and Development – Relevant individual training budget and the opportunity to grow within a dynamic and supportive team.

👌Generous refer a friend scheme.

➕ Plus lots more!

About us

We have an open, supportive, dynamic culture where talented people are trusted to contribute to the team and company by carrying out their roles in a professional, collaborative, and skilled manner. We value the expertise of our team members and offer opportunities for personal development and career progression within the company.

👉If this is the opportunity you have been waiting for, to work in a fast-paced company with innovative products and cutting-edge technology, please apply now.

📢The candidates must be eligible to work in the UK as no visa sponsorship can be provided.