Software Engineering Lead

Description Ready to shape engineering at scale? As our Engineering Lead, you'll drive the platforms and tooling that help teams deliver faster, safer, and smarter. Here at Cushon by WTW, we like to do things a bit differently… our mission is to help as many people as possible to get comfortable with their finances. Our vision is to bring tech revolution to the financial services industry. We will do this by building simple, convenient, and delightful financial experiences centred on the individual. These will accumulate incrementally until one morning we will wake up and realise Cushon has become one of the UK’s best-loved financial apps. We offer workplace savings products & pensions to customers, either directly, or through employee benefit programs at some of the largest corporates in the UK. We're a technology-led organisation who believe we can offer great value to customers by building a user-friendly, smart, and cost-effective investment platform that automates many of the processes that would otherwise require large operations teams to manage. So, to support us in this mission, we are looking for an Engineering Lead to provide technical leadership for one of our teams. You will help set direction for shared infrastructure and engineering operations — the production hosting, security perimeter, release pipelines, observability, and developer tooling that every engineering squad depends on to ship safely. This is a role that includes Line Management responsibility for your team of 5-7 Engineers with the assistance of an assigned Engineering Manager. The Role Technical Leadership Lead the evolution of backend architecture across our PHP platform, Go services, and GraphQL/API layers — balancing delivery speed with long-term maintainabilityGuide API and domain design standards — clear service boundaries, consistent contracts, and pragmatic integration between modern services and legacy systemsShape event-driven and integration patterns so teams can build independently without breaking cross-squad journeysChampion automated testing, observability, and production readiness for backend services — PHPUnit, Go tests, Datadog, and safe release practicesOversee database and schema evolution practices — migrations, data integrity, and performance — in partnership with platform and infrastructure teamsLead incident response for backend-owned systems — triage, escalation, post-incident reviews, and runbook qualityMentor engineers on PHP (Yii/Yii2), Go, Security, Performance and Optimisation — raising the bar through design review and hands-on contribution when neededSupport production readiness for high-risk changes — coordinated cutovers, rollouts, and cross-team dependencies at the legacy/modern boundary Delivery Leadership Drive successful delivery of your part of complex, multi-team initiatives by coordinating resources, managing dependencies, and removing blockersDefine and communicate technical strategy for your domain area, improving delivery processes and engineering practices within your areaBuild strong relationships across product, engineering, security, and business stakeholdersHelp teams maintain focus on priorities while managing technical debt and operational responsibilities Foster collaboration and alignment across teams, engaging with other Engineering Leads and leading engineering-wide initiatives. People & Developer Experience Effective Line management and the passion to coach and mentor team members in delivery practices and technical leadershipStay hands-on — contributing designs, code, config, and runbooks when that is the fastest way to reduce risk but also know when to step back and allow the team to take the helmImprove developer experience: local environments, self-service tooling, documentation, and onboarding for new engineersContribute to hiring and raising the bar for future Engineers Qualifications What you’ll bring Leadership & delivery Ability to align technical decisions with delivery timelines, reliability targets, and business needsExpertise in championing engineering best practices while balancing speed, quality, and operational stabilitySkill in reviewing and contributing to technical designs that meet quality and security standardsStrong stakeholder management and communication skills at all levelsCapability to coach and mentor team members in delivery practices and technical leadershipStrategic and tactical decision-making abilitiesCommitment to creating an empowering team environment that prioritises customer experience and engineering productivity Technical Experience Proven experience as a team lead or technical lead in fast-growing, regulated environments (fintech, pensions, banking, or insurance)Deep expertise in at least one engineering discipline relevant to your squad — backend, frontend, mobile, quality, or platform operations — with solid breadth across design, build, test, and runTrack record of owning production systems end-to-end: implementation, rollout, monitoring, incident response, and follow-upExperience leading technical delivery on complex, ambiguous initiatives involving multiple engineers, dependencies, or teamsStrong architectural judgement — evaluating trade-offs, setting direction, and aligning others on pragmatic, maintainable solutionsExpertise in automated testing, CI/CD, and safe release practices in high-stakes production environmentsFamiliarity with observability and operational excellence — monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and blameless learning from incidentsUnderstanding of security, compliance, and non-functional requirements in regulated financial servicesComfortable working across modern and legacy systems — evolving the platform incrementally rather than through unnecessary rewritesAbility to stay hands-on — contributing to code, designs, and reviews when that is the fastest way to reduce risk or unblock the team What We Offer Enjoy a benefits package designed to help you thrive, both professionally and personally. You'll receive 25 days of annual leave plus an extra WTW day to relax and recharge. Our comprehensive health and wellbeing offering includes private healthcare, life insurance, group income protection, and regular health assessments, all giving you peace of mind. Secure your future with our defined contribution pension scheme, featuring matched contributions up to 10% from the company. We support your growth and balance with hybrid working options, access to an employee assistance programme, and a fully paid volunteer day to make a difference in your community. On top of these, you can opt into a variety of additional perks including an electric vehicle car scheme, share scheme, cycle-to-work programme, dental and optical cover, critical illness protection, and much more. Start making the most of your career and wellbeing with a range of benefits tailored for you. Equal Opportunity Employer We’re committed to equal employment opportunity and provide application, interview and workplace adjustments and accommodations to all applicants. If you foresee any barriers, from the application process through to joining WTW, please email candidatehelpdesk@wtwco.com