Lead Forward Deployed Software Engineer in Slough

Lead Forward Deployed Software Engineer

Insurtech Scale-Up · City of London (Hybrid) · Up to £130,000 + equity

Are you a Lead Software Engineer who loves building incredible products and shipping them to market? Someone who thrives at the front end of client delivery, leading discovery, driving projects forward, and growing a team of engineers around you? If so, this Forward Deployed Software Engineer role is for you.

About the Client

Morela is proud to be supporting our client, a fast-growing Insurtech building the next generation of technology for the specialty (re)insurance market. Their cloud-based platform brings algorithmic underwriting to commercial and specialty lines, ingesting broker submissions, structuring the data, triaging complex risks, building contracts and automating underwriting workflows, so insurers can accept, refer or decline business faster and more consistently. In short, they automate the repetitive and structure the complex so brokers and carriers can trade faster and make better decisions. It's a collaborative, high-calibre engineering culture that values curiosity, ownership and genuinely nice people. Our client's identity is kept confidential at this stage and will be shared with candidates as we progress.

The Team and Growth Plans

The client currently serves around a dozen customers, with more confirmed, and their engineering leadership has been clear that the pipeline through this year and into next means they could comfortably double the delivery team. This role sits at the heart of that growth, in the senior technical leadership layer being built as the function scales.

The Role

This is a hands-on senior engineering role, not support or pre-sales. You'll sit close to the client, get under the skin of their business, and personally architect, build and ship the software that solves their problems, owning the solution end to end from the first conversation to something live in production. It's real engineering with the customer in the room.

Alongside the build, you'll lead and grow a small team of engineers, setting the technical direction and helping the people around you develop. In short, the role calls for three things at once: strong hands-on software engineering, genuine client-facing ability, and the technical leadership to set direction and grow a team.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of engineers, setting technical direction, giving feedback and growing talent into more senior roles.
• Architect and build robust technical solutions from client requirements, using the client's domain-specific, spreadsheet-like functional programming language (full training provided).
• Own the design, configuration and delivery of formal specifications for insurance products across multiple lines of business (for example marine, aviation and political violence).
• Act as a trusted technical partner to clients, shaping solutions around their strategic goals and constraints.
• Collaborate with product, engineering and commercial teams to customise and configure the platform for client needs.
• Design, build and manage platform integrations, ensuring reliable delivery and ongoing technical support.
• Own proof-of-value and pilot projects that are pivotal to the client's growth strategy.
• Raise the technical bar, shaping engineering standards and best practice as the team scales.

What They're Looking For

Essential

• A strong, high-quality software engineering background, someone who architects, builds and ships real products, with enterprise SaaS experience and full software development lifecycle fluency.
• Proven experience leading and mentoring engineers and setting technical direction.
• Comfort picking up functional languages and a different way of thinking. Existing Haskell or similar functional programming exposure is a real advantage, but not essential, full training is provided (a strong Java/JVM background is a positive signal).
• Genuine client-facing ability, calm, confident and credible with senior stakeholders, including demanding ones.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-changing scale-up, comfortable with ambiguity, autonomy and context-switching.

Desirable

• Experience in Insurtech, insurance or a related regulated industry (training is provided, so this is a leg-up rather than a requirement).
• Experience designing and managing platform integrations across complex enterprise environments.
• Exposure to distributed or remote working environments.

Influence Over the Core Product

The role owns solution and engineering direction at the client engagement level. Over the core product the influence is meaningful but collaborative: the client has separate product and engineering teams, and this role works with them rather than setting the platform's core engineering direction. That said, these engineers are at the coalface with clients, so their feedback shapes what product prioritises, and they own the proof-of-value and pilot projects that prove out and drive new product direction.

Location and Package

• Location: City of London, hybrid, typically 2 days a week in the office or on client site.
• Base salary: up to circa £100,000 to £130,000 depending on experience.
• Equity and company stock options.
• Benefits: private medical insurance, income protection, life insurance at 4x base salary, enhanced maternity and paternity pay, 28 days' holiday plus bank holidays, pension and nursery salary exchange, learning allowance and leave for conferences or exams, home office and equipment allowance plus a company laptop, on-site gym, financial wellbeing platform, employee assistance programme, and regular team socials.

For a confidential conversation, contact Adam Moore at Morela·