Backend Engineer; Node or JVM

Company Description

Legal & General (L&G) is a leading UK financial services group and major global investor.

We’ve been safeguarding people’s financial futures since 1836, and strive to build a better society, while improving the lives of our customers and creating value for shareholders.

We are one of the world’s largest asset managers and provide powerful asset origination capabilities. Together, these underpin our retirement and protection solutions: we are an international player in pension risk transfer, in UK and US life insurance, and in UK workplace pensions and retirement income.

Who we are

Our Retail business supports customers throughout their lives, to help them save, plan, protect and enjoy retirement.

We’re a leading provider of retirement and protection solutions. We aim to support our c.12.8 million policyholders and workplace members throughout their lifelong financial journeys.

We focus on helping the customers of today and tomorrow achieve better long‑term outcomes. We either talk with them directly or work with intermediaries and employers to meet their needs. We use the latest technology to connect with them quickly, efficiently and wherever possible in highly personalised ways.

We are seeking a Staff Engineer to join our software delivery team as a principal contributor. In this role, you will leverage your technical expertise to guide and support a team of engineers, while also actively contributing to the team's development efforts.

You will play a key role in driving successful team outcomes, shaping strategic application design decisions, and identifying opportunities to standardise approaches across adjacent teams. Your leadership will help ensure the delivery of high‑quality, high‑value software to our customers.

• Leveraging and promoting technically optimal engineering practices across adjacent teams to drive efficient, high‑quality outcomes for our customers
• Advocating for and building elegant, scalable software solutions from complex requirements, while partnering with Solutions Architects to ensure alignment with business value, quality standards, and engineering best practices
• Defining and guiding the strategy for managing technical debt to maintain secure, resilient, and reliable systems across Legal & General
• Promoting a culture of continuous improvement by encouraging inspection and adaptation to enhance team effectiveness, productivity, and wellbeing
• Fostering mutual respect and collaboration within the team by mentoring and supporting less experienced engineers, and facilitating smooth delivery through effective communication
• Coaching the Developer Community to establish development standards that meet security, compliance, and audit requirements without compromising delivery speed
• Ensuring all engineering work reflects Legal & General’s commitment to Customer Experience and Treating Customers Fairly principles

Who we’re looking for:

• Backend - at least 4 years experience working as a backend developer on 1 or more large commercial projects (Node or JVM based frameworks)
• Minimum 2years of hands‑on experience with JavaScript/Type Script, including deep proficiency in React and REST‑based microservice development using JVM Spring or Node.js
• Solid understanding of mobile and backend application architecture patterns (e.g. MVP, MVVM, Flux, Hexagonal, Onion), clean code principles (e.g. SOLID), and scalable software design
• Proven experience with test‑driven development, testing strategies aligned with the testing pyramid, and a strong focus on security, usability, and accessibility
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban), Git/Git Flow, CI/CD pipelines, and containerization tools like Docker and Kubernetes
• At least 2 years of commercial experience with React or React Native, plus working knowledge of Graph
  
  QL, AWS services, and mobile performance optimisation
• Understanding of web, API, and mobile security best practices, observability strategies, and the ability to identify and remediate security flaws in code and infrastructure
• Demonstrated ability to mentor peers, facilitate technical workshops, drive alignment across…