AI‑Powered Software Architect: Lead Django Microservices in London

At Plentific, we’re redefining property management in real time. Our mission is to lead real estate through the transformative journey into “The World of Now,” enabling us to empower property professionals through our innovative, cloud‑based platform. We harness cutting‑edge technology and data‑driven insights to streamline operations for landlords, letting agents, and property managers—enabling them to optimize maintenance, manage repairs, and make informed decisions instantly. Our platform is designed to create seamless, real‑time workflows that transform traditional property management into a dynamic, digital experience.

The Role

We're looking for a Software Architect to join our engineering team and play a pivotal role in shaping the technical direction of our platform. This is not just a hands‑on engineering role; it's a leadership position where you'll be expected to bridge the gap between product vision and technical execution. You’ll work closely with Product Managers to translate business requirements into robust technical strategies, produce detailed technical analyses, and guide a team of engineers toward successful, on‑time delivery. At the same time, you'll remain deeply hands‑on, contributing directly to our codebase and setting the bar for engineering excellence across the team.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Strategy
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers to translate product requirements into comprehensive technical analyses, breaking down complexity into clear, actionable engineering plans with the help of AI spec‑driven development tools.
• Define and own the technical roadmap for your team, ensuring architectural decisions align with business goals and long‑term platform scalability.
• Guide and mentor engineers throughout the delivery lifecycle, from design through to deployment, ensuring the team stays on track and produces high‑quality output.
• Act as the primary technical point of contact for your squad, facilitating alignment between engineering, product, and stakeholders.
• Design and evolve scalable, resilient microservices architectures using Django and Python, deployed on Kubernetes at scale.
• Lead the design of APIs, data pipelines, and distributed systems with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Define and enforce best practices around database design, query optimisation, and data modelling across relational databases (PostgreSQL).
• Evaluate emerging technologies and architectural patterns, making evidence‑based recommendations to the broader engineering organisation.
• Write well‑formulated, testable, and readable code using appropriate software design patterns.
• Build and maintain APIs, microservices, and data pipelines.
• Write complex SQL queries and optimise database performance.
• Debug and resolve issues across our applications, including production incidents.
• Review, maintain, and refactor existing code to support improved or new features.

• AI‑Driven Development
• Champion and embed AI‑assisted practices across the full development lifecycle, including spec generation, architectural design, coding, and delivery, ensuring the team operates at the frontier of modern, AI‑augmented engineering.

• Delivery & Collaboration
• Lead code reviews, setting a high bar for quality and consistency across the team.
• Work with product owners, engineering managers, UI designers, and engineers to produce technical specifications and project documentation.
• Remove technical blockers and proactively surface risks to delivery, proposing pragmatic solutions.
• Write clear technical documentation for code, algorithms, APIs, and system architecture.

Experience and Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong focus on Python and Django.
• Proven, hands‑on experience building and operating Django‑based microservices at scale, running in production on Kubernetes.
• Demonstrable experience with AI tools to assist Software Development and Architectural document writing (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor).
• Demonstrable experience in a Tech Lead or Software Architect capacity, owning technical direction and guiding teams toward delivery.
• Strong track record of producing technical analyses: working alongside Product Managers to assess requirements, define solutions, estimate complexity, and produce clear, actionable engineering plans.
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems design, including event‑driven architectures, asynchronous processing (e.g. Celery, Redis), and inter‑service communication patterns.
• Expert‑level understanding of relational database management (PostgreSQL preferred), including schema design, normalisation, and query optimisation.
• Solid grasp of computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, and software design patterns.
• Experience with AWS and cloud‑native infrastructure; familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Jenkins).
• Ability to work UK working hours (+/- 3 hours).
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• A collaborative, can‑do mindset with strong ownership and accountability.

Benefits

• A competitive compensation package.
• 25 days annual holiday + 1 additional day for every year served up to 5 years.
• Flexible working environment including the option to work abroad.
• Private health care for you and immediate family members with discounted gym membership, optical, dental and private GP.
• Enhanced parental leave.
• Life insurance (4x salary).
• Employee assistance program.
• Company volunteering day and charity salary sacrifice scheme.
• Learning management system powered by Udemy.
• Referral bonus and charity donation if someone you introduce joins the company.
• Season ticket loan, Cycle to work, Electric vehicle and Techscheme programs.
• Company‑sponsored lunches, dinners and social gatherings.
• Fully stocked kitchen with drinks, snacks, fruit, breakfast cereal etc.