Senior PHP Software Engineer (Remote) in London

About Xceedance

Xceedance is a global provider of strategic consulting, managed services, and technology solutions to the insurance industry. We help insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and MGAs modernize operations, enhance underwriting and claims capabilities, and accelerate digital transformation using data, analytics, and advanced platforms.

Role Details

• Location: London
• Experience: 4–7 years of overall software engineering experience
• Engagement Model: Full-time, Product Engineering

Job Responsibilities

• Design and implement RESTful APIs and microservices using Java 17+ and Spring Boot 3.x.
• Build and maintain business logic within the BPA platform, ensuring correctness, performance, and testability.
• Write clean, well-structured code with a strong focus on SOLID principles and design patterns.
• Participate in design discussions, contribute to low-level design documents and sequence diagrams.
• Conduct code reviews; flag and reduce technical debt proactively.
• Write unit and integration tests (JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers) to maintain high coverage.
• Collaborate with QA, DevOps, and Product teams in an Agile (Scrum/Kanban) environment.
• Integrate LLM-based capabilities (e.g., OpenAI, Gemini, Claude) into Java services via REST/SDK — for use cases such as document extraction, policy summarisation, or intelligent routing.
• Build or consume vector-search capabilities (e.g., OpenSearch, Pinecone) for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns.
• Use AI coding assistants (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.) fluently as part of your daily development workflow to raise throughput and quality.
• Contribute to prompt design, context management, and response parsing for AI-enhanced features.
• Stay current with applied AI developments and bring relevant patterns back to the team.
• Break down stories into tasks, provide estimates, and surface risks early in sprint planning.
• Maintain observability standards: structured logging, metrics, and distributed tracing.
• Support CI/CD pipelines and participate in production readiness reviews.
• Mentor junior engineers through pair programming, code reviews, and design walkthroughs.

Essential Qualifications and Skills

• ~4–7 years of hands-on Java development experience; strong Java 11+ command is non-negotiable.
• ~ Solid Spring Boot experience: REST APIs, Spring Security, Spring Data, Spring Cache.
• ~ Good understanding of microservices architecture, resilience patterns (Circuit Breaker, Retry, Bulkhead).
• ~ Experience with Camunda BPM or similar workflow engines.
• ~ Strong SQL and PostgreSQL skills; familiarity with ORM frameworks (Hibernate/JPA).
• ~ Practical Git experience with trunk-based development or GitFlow.
• ~ Working knowledge of OAuth2 / OpenID Connect, JWT, and secure API design.
• ~ Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or equivalent).
• ~ Demonstrated hands-on exposure to at least one of: LLM API integration, vector databases, prompt engineering, or RAG pipeline construction — even in a personal project or hackathon context.
• ~ Familiarity with REST-based AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Vertex AI, or equivalent).
• ~ Basic understanding of embeddings, semantic search, and token-based context management.
• ~ Comfortable reading Python code or notebooks (most AI libraries are Python-first); ability to translate patterns into Java implementations.
• ~ Active use of AI coding tools in your current workflow.
• ~ Experience with Agile delivery — sprint planning, story decomposition, backlog grooming, retrospectives.
• ~ Strong unit and component testing discipline; exposure to BDD or contract testing is a plus.
• ~ Appreciation for observability: structured logging, distributed tracing, alerting hygiene.

Desirable Qualifications and Skills

• Insurance or Insurtech domain knowledge — Policy Administration, Claims, or Underwriting workflows.
• Familiarity with Kafka or event-streaming patterns (producing, consuming, DLQs, retries).
• Knowledge of containerisation and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes/AKS.
• Exposure to LangChain4j, Spring AI, or similar Java-native AI integration frameworks.
• Understanding of ACORD data standards.

What Good Looks Like

The strongest candidates will show us — not just tell us — their AI engagement. That might be a GitHub repo with an LLM integration, a description of a RAG pipeline you prototyped, a prompt-engineering experiment you ran, or evidence of using Copilot or Cursor to measurably improve your delivery. We are not hiring an AI specialist; we are hiring a solid Java engineer who is already applying AI rather than watching it from the sideline.

What Xceedance Offers

• Opportunity to shape core solutions for leading global insurers and reinsurers.
• A collaborative, innovation-driven culture with exposure to modern technologies and cloud-native architectures.
• Professional development opportunities, certifications, and learning programs.
• Competitive compensation and benefits package, aligned with experience and location.