Technical Team Lead (JVM) - Startup - £100k Equity

Lead Backend Engineer (Kotlin/JVM) in a B2B FinTech startup Hands-on, leading a team of 4 Up to £100,000 Equity Benefits Hybrid Remote: 3 Days in Central London office, 2 days working from home Join a B2B FinTech startup backed by a global bank, that is transforming the financial advisory space. They’ve created a unified, scalable, AI-driven platform that’s moving the industry away from using outdated data storage and communication systems like spreadsheets As Lead Backend Engineer , you’ll be the technical authority for all backend, architectural and infrastructure decisions . Reporting directly to the CEO, you'll lead and grow a high-performing engineering function, while staying deep in the code as an Engineer. In this role you will: Lead architecture to build scalable, event-driven backend systems Own and evolve the cloud and infrastructure stack (Terraform, Kubernetes, GCP) Line manage and mentor 4 Engineers, hiring more later in 2025 Lead daily standups, drive delivery, and maintain a high bar for code quality Partner with the CEO on roadmap priorities and hiring strategy Be comfortable switching hats. Player/coach, architect, hands-on builder This isn’t a greenfield 0→1, the foundations are in place. Your challenge is 1→10, 1→100. You’ll be building a system that unlocks the product roadmap, allowing the business to scale with confidence. Think: backend overhaul, introducing messaging layers (Kafka or PubSub), scaling infra, and embedding clean Engineering practices Tech Stack: Kotlin, Grails, Vert.x, gRPC, microservices, event-driven architecture, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, Kafka, BigQuery, PostgreSQL Ideal Candidates will have: 5 years in Backend-focused JVM Engineering (Kotlin, Java, or Scala) 1 year leading engineering teams of 4 people Experience designing event-driven systems, microservices and using gRPC Experience in a startup environment: building fast, wearing many hats Hands-on DevOps experience: Terraform, GCP, Kubernetes Experience building data-heavy products (e.g. CRMs, forms, internal tools) AI / FinTech experience a bonus No Visa Sponsorship Available 4-stage Interview Process Please apply with an updated CV displaying your impact & we’ll be in touch!