Lead Software Engineer

Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne

Lead Software Engineer London (hybrid) 90k to 105k We’re partnering with an ambitious London-based payments start-up looking to hire a hands-on Lead Software Engineer to help shape the next generation of their platform as they scale. This is a high-impact opportunity for a senior engineering leader who enjoys operating across architecture, platform engineering, product delivery, and technical strategy in a fast-moving environment.

You’ll play a key role in defining engineering standards, influencing product direction, and building scalable systems capable of supporting rapid growth within a modern payments ecosystem. The Opportunity Joining at an exciting stage of growth, you’ll work closely with founders, product teams, and engineers to design and deliver a highly scalable payments platform using modern cloud-native technologies. This role combines: hands-on engineering, technical leadership, architecture ownership, and mentoring responsibilities.

You’ll be expected to remain close to the code while driving best practice across the wider engineering function.

Key Responsibilities Define and evolve platform architecture across mobile, backend, and cloud infrastructure Lead engineering design decisions and establish scalable development standards Build and optimise high-performance backend services using Node.js Drive mobile architecture and delivery using React Native Own AWS infrastructure strategy, scalability, reliability, and security Work closely with product and leadership teams to shape technical roadmap Champion engineering excellence, Dev Ops culture, CI/CD, and automation Explore and implement modern AI-assisted engineering tooling and workflows Required Experience We’re looking for a strong technical leader with recent experience of operating at Technical Architect, Principal Engineer or Staff Engineer level, with experience building scalable products within start-up or high-growth environments.

Tech stack expertise - deep backend engineering expertise using NodeJS is needed, Typescript, familiarity with React Native, and strong knowledge around AWS infrastructure and cloud-native architecture. Consumer product intuition for the demographic - consumer fintech experience ideally, but even adjacent experience with consumer apps focused on Millennia ls and Gen Z would be a signal of the product intuition sought. Startup mindset - looking for someone comfortable operating in a small, early-stage team, where they'll help own the tech and will be comfortable currently being without a senior peer to validate decisions against (prior early-stage experience would be a strong signal).

Architecture ownership - wanting candidates who've made architecture decisions at meaningful scale, so has a profile that evidence of that kind of decision making. AI as core leverage - Lang Chain, Lang Graph, MCP, Claude Code, spec-driven development, prompt versioning at production etc., rather than just using AI as a productivity tool. What’s on Offer Opportunity to shape architecture from an early stage High ownership and autonomy Modern engineering environment Fast-growing fintech business with strong leadership backing Competitive salary  equity potential Hybrid working in London