Software Engineering Lead

London, United Kingdom

Who we're looking for

We are looking for an Engineering Lead to join the Client Engagement and Digital Content Platforms Team. The Engineering Lead is a highly proficient, versatile and hands on engineer with excellent communication skills, working across one or more engineering delivery teams to deliver high quality solutions quickly and reliably. The role requires a high level of competence and up to date knowledge of modern data and engineering practices, with cloud native platforms, and a commitment to fostering a collaborative engineering culture.

In this role you will:

• Own and evolve architectural patterns, standards and best practices for the domain.
• Ensure data ingestion, transformation and modelling approaches deliver optimal outcomes.
• Drive performance, cost optimisation and scalability across platforms.
• Embed governance, security and data quality practices.
• Guide and mentor developers (including 3rd party partners), setting technical objectives and reviewing performance.

You will collaborate with Enterprise Engineering and Technology teams to shape the development culture at Schroders and contribute to:

• Standards, patterns and reference architectures for quality solutions.
• Shared components and reusable assets.
• Improvements in how we deliver engineering and software solutions to the business.

• Lead development of applications using appropriate technologies.
• Lead development of backend services and APIs using serverless technologies.
• Lead all aspects of software delivery - design, development, testing and implementation.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders and agile analysts to translate features and user stories into working software.
• Prioritise backlog with the Delivery Lead and manage technical debt.
• Work with the UX Design team to deliver a great user experience.
• Articulate technical solutions to non technical stakeholders.
• Identify and resolve dependencies with colleagues from other teams.
• Write and maintain infrastructure as code for CI/CD.
• Provide technical guidance, conduct code reviews, ensure adherence to standards, and mentor team members.
• Contribute to agile planning and ceremonies (story refinement, demos, retrospectives).
• Participate in Enterprise Engineering community discussions on technology trends.
• Maintain, support and innovate a complex platform to create value for business and clients.

The knowledge, experience and qualifications you need:

• Good experience in DevOps, automated deployments, and source control tools (ideally Azure DevOps and Git).
• Performance tuning processes for large data sets.
• All round technical knowledge to recommend best solutions.
• Delivery of well structured and tested software.
• Experience working with senior stakeholders and users.
• Logical, structured thought processes and strong problem solving skills.
• Relationship management and business engagement.
• Ability to hand over solutions to first level support.
• Experience with global colleagues across time zones and cultural differences.
• Excellent command of English (written and spoken).
• Experience implementing data quality frameworks.
• Demonstrable competency in data modelling.

Core Engineering Requirements

• Strong hands on experience developing production grade applications in Python.
• Proficiency with Python libraries and frameworks: LangChain, LangGraph, Pandas, NumPy, Requests, DeepEval, Behave, Pytest.
• Experience building, testing, and maintaining scalable backend services and APIs.
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices (code quality, testing, observability, production support).
• Hands on experience with Azure services (Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Blob Storage, API Management).
• Experience designing and deploying cloud native solutions on Azure.
• Understanding of secure, scalable, and resilient cloud architecture patterns.

Infrastructure as Code and DevOps

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform and ARM Templates.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions.
• Familiarity with automated testing, deployment workflows, environment management, and release processes.

Database Experience

• Practical experience with relational and analytical databases (PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake).
• Ability to design, query, optimise, and integrate databases into application workflows.

AI and GenAI Experience

• Experience building Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions.
• Experience developing agentic AI workflows (tool usage, orchestration, ReAct style frameworks).
• Hands on experience with OpenAI APIs.
• Experience evaluating GenAI workflows, model outputs, and application performance.
• Ability to productionise GenAI solutions with testing, monitoring, guardrails, and evaluation frameworks.

Testing and Evaluation

• Experience with automated testing frameworks such as Pytest and Behave.
• Experience with GenAI evaluation tools such as DeepEval.
• Ability to define evaluation criteria for AI outputs (accuracy, relevance, robustness, reliability).

The knowledge, experience and qualifications that will help:

• Experience in Financial Services and data knowledge.
• Familiarity with Agile delivery methodologies.
• Ability to engage with stakeholders in both Business and Technology.
• Multi disciplined support throughout SDLC.
• Knowledge of test automation techniques (TDD).
• Capable of balancing timely delivery against strategic development.
• Pro active and delivery focused.
• Experience with Claude Code and GitHub Copilot.
• TypeScript, Next.js, React.
• Experience in financial services, asset management, or regulated environments.

We are an equal opportunities employer: you are welcome here regardless of your age, disability, gender identity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, socio economic background, or any other protected characteristics. Inclusion and diversity are a strategic priority for us, and we are committed to creating an inclusive culture that enables better decisions and outcomes for our clients.