Lead Backend Engineer / Team Lead (Platform Modernization)

We are seeking a highly experienced Lead Backend Engineer to take technical ownership of a live, revenue-generating enterprise platform during a critical modernisation phase. The system currently processes high volumes of data end-to-end but requires immediate architectural remediation to dismantle technical debt, establish automated testing, and eliminate security vulnerabilities without disrupting production traffic.

Key Responsibilities

• Dismantle Monoliths: Lead the architectural strategy to apply the Strangler pattern, breaking apart legacy monolithic APIs into scalable, domain-specific microservices.

• Database & Library Decoupling: Architect the extraction of service-specific data from heavily coupled shared databases and untangle monolithic shared libraries to enable independent service deployments.

• Security Remediation: Drive the patching of severe backend vulnerabilities, replace end-of-life dependencies, and enforce secure credential and identity management across containerised environments.

• Establish Automated Testing: Build a culture of quality by designing and implementing unit, integration, and API contract test frameworks from scratch for legacy services currently lacking test coverage.

• Framework Modernisation: Plan and execute the upgrade path for outdated backend technologies, migrating legacy Java applications and deprecated frameworks to current, supported LTS releases.

• Pipeline Resilience: Maintain and scale async message-queue pipelines while ensuring that microservices gracefully handle network timeouts, component failures, and connection recoveries.

Required Experience & Qualifications

• Senior Backend Expertise: 8+ years of software engineering experience with deep, hands-on knowledge of the Java ecosystem and modern enterprise architecture.

• Framework Mastery: Extensive experience with Spring Boot, Spring Security, and navigating complex major-version upgrades across large codebases.

• Legacy Refactoring: Proven track record of dismantling distributed monoliths, isolating shared databases, and safely refactoring live production systems.

• Test-Driven Leadership: Demonstrated ability to establish automated testing standards in environments with low or zero coverage, utilising characterisation tests to lock down legacy behaviour before altering code.

• Security-First Mindset: Strong understanding of OWASP principles, with practical experience remediating insecure cryptography, SQL injection vectors, and access control misconfigurations.

• Team Mentorship: Experience leading, mentoring, and shielding a team of engineers through high-pressure, complex technical transformations.