At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the design and development of a scalable payments platform using modern technologies.
- Company: Ambitious London-based fintech start-up with a focus on innovation.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, equity potential, and hybrid working options.
- Other info: Join a high-growth team with opportunities for significant impact and career advancement.
- Why this job: Shape the future of payments while working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
- Qualifications: Strong technical leadership and experience in building scalable products.
The predicted salary is between 90000 - 105000 £ per year.
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, DevOps 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 Millennials 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 - LangChain, LangGraph, 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
Lead Software Engineer in Slough employer: Franklin Bates
Join a dynamic and innovative payments start-up in London, where you'll have the opportunity to shape the future of their platform as a Lead Software Engineer. With a strong focus on employee growth, a collaborative work culture, and the chance to work closely with founders and product teams, this role offers high ownership and autonomy in a fast-paced environment. Enjoy competitive compensation, equity potential, and the flexibility of hybrid working while being part of a team that champions engineering excellence and modern technologies.
