Lead Software Engineer

Royal London is seeking an experienced Lead Software Engineer to join one of our application delivery teams within the Digital space at Royal London. This role is focused on modern software & application engineering: designing, building and operating customer-facing and internal digital services with a strong emphasis on Azure-based application development using Angular and C#/.NET.

You will play a key technical leadership role within a cross-functional squad, shaping solution design and delivery while remaining hands-on. You will lead by example, building high-quality, secure, and resilient applications, while supporting and developing other engineers.

This is an application-focused role, working closely with product, architecture, cloud, and mobile teams to deliver valuable outcomes for customers and colleagues., * Strong software engineering background, with experience leading delivery across the full application development lifecycle., * Lead the design and development of complex systems, ensuring both functional and non-functional requirements are met.

• Build, test and operate Angular front-end and C#/.NET back-end services deployed in Azure.
• Carry out technical design and impact assessments for changes to new and existing applications.
• Ensure agreed designs and documentation are produced to the required standard ahead of delivery.
• Champion engineering best practice, including clean code, automated testing and observability.
• Work closely with Architects, Testers, Product Owners, Analysts and stakeholders to deliver high-quality outcomes.
• Support the day-to-day operation of live applications, including incident investigation and resolution.
• Mentor and develop other engineers, contributing to a strong and supportive engineering culture.
• Contribute to the evolution of software engineering practice across Royal London.

You are a hands-on technical leader who enjoys designing and building well-engineered applications. You care deeply about software quality, security, resilience and operability, and you take pride in leaving systems better than you found them.

You are comfortable balancing:

• Technical leadership and design decisions.
• Delivery accountability.
• Mentoring and supporting engineers.

You thrive in a collaborative, product-focused environment where engineering judgement matters., * Proven experience designing, building and maintaining modern web applications with strong expertise in either Angular (or similar front-end frameworks) or C# / .NET, and working knowledge of the complementary stack.

• Strong experience building and running applications in Azure cloud environments, with an emphasis on application-level design, resilience and security rather than platform or DevOps specialism.
• Strong understanding of API-driven and service-based architecture.
• Experience using CI/CD pipelines to build, test and deploy application code safely and repeatedly.
• Strong focus on application quality including testing, performance, security, resilience and operational readiness.
• Ability to work autonomously, making sound technical decisions with limited supervision.
• Experience of acting as a technical lead and mentor, supporting engineers at different career stages.
• A mindset of continuous improvement, actively developing your own skills and promoting engineering best practice., * Experience with common Azure services used in application delivery, such as App Services, Functions, Storage, Key Vault and Application Insights.
• Experience with API Management (e.g. Azure APIM) as part of application integration.
• Exposure to mobile application development (iOS, Android and/or cross-platform frameworks) or experience supporting mobile apps via backend services.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Bicep or Terraform), without this being the primary focus of the role.
• Experience building and supporting applications in regulated or security-conscious environments.

We offer competitive benefits including 28 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, an up to 14% employer-matching pension, and private medical insurance.

Royal London is the UK's largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, offering protection, long-term savings and asset management products and services. Our People Promise is that we will all work somewhere inclusive, responsible, enjoyable and fulfilling, underpinned by our Spirit of Royal London values: Empowered, Trustworthy, Collaborate, Achieve.