Job Description Senior Software Engineer (Java / Kotlin) Manchester (Hybrid - 2 days onsite per week) Contract until end of 2026 £731.25/day Umbrella A global travel technology organisation is building a brand-new connectivity platform and requires a Senior Software Engineer to help shape the architecture, engineering standards and technical direction of a newly formed team. This is a hands-on senior engineering role where you'll lead the design and delivery of large-scale backend services and integrations connecting external providers into a high-volume marketplace platform. What you'll be doing Designing and building scalable backend services using Java and/or Kotlin Leading system design discussions and driving technical decisions Building integrations with third-party APIs and external platforms Developing resilient distributed systems with a strong focus on reliability and observability Collaborating with Product, Operations and Commercial teams to deliver business-critical functionality Driving engineering best practice, code quality and operational excellence Mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership within the team Key experience required Strong commercial experience developing backend systems in Java and/or Kotlin Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production environments Strong understanding of API design, integrations and microservices architectures Experience working within AWS-based cloud environments Kubernetes, Docker and CI/CD experience Experience with event-driven architectures, messaging platforms or Kafka Strong knowledge of reliability engineering, observability, monitoring and incident management Ability to lead technical design initiatives and break down complex problems into deliverable solutions Desirable experience Writing integration tests and contract tests Travel, marketplace, ticketing or connectivity platform experience Experience using Claude or other AI-assisted engineering tools Previous experience helping establish processes, standards and architecture within new or scaling teams What's on offer Long-term contract through to the end of 2026 Opportunity to influence architecture and engineering standards from the ground up Work on a highly scalable, globally distributed platform Hybrid working model with 2 days per week onsite in Manchester
