Senior Fullstack Engineer

Job description

About Allica Bank Allica is the UK’s fastest growing company - and the fastest-growing financial technology (Fintech) firm ever. Our purpose is to help established SMEs, one of the last major underserved opportunities in Fintech. Established SMEs are the backbone of local communities - representing over a third of our economy - yet have been largely neglected both by traditional high street banks and modern fintech providers. Role Description The Senior Full Stack Engineer leads the technical design and delivery within a single squad and line-manages 1–2 Full Stack Engineers. The role exists to ensure the squad delivers secure, reliable, and accessible products, while maintaining high engineering standards and an excellent developer experience. You will use your expertise in Spring Boot microservices (Kotlin/Java) and modern web technologies (React/TypeScript) to design and deliver complex features end-to-end. Our backend services run as containerised applications on Azure Container Apps, and our web applications are deployed via Azure Static Web Apps; you will ensure the squad’s services and applications are production-ready and effectively use these platforms. You will drive best practices in observability, CI/CD, security, performance, and accessibility, ensuring systems meet the standards expected of a UK bank. You will create and maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for significant decisions, aligning with organisation-wide patterns. You are hands-on and collaborative: you design features, write code, review changes, mentor engineers in your squad, and work closely with Product and Design. You model responsible, effective use of GenAI tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot) to improve productivity and quality. Success in this role is measured by the squad’s delivery of complex features, improvements in SLOs and operational metrics, the health of the codebase, and the growth and effectiveness of your squad. Principal Accountabilities Lead the end-to-end design and delivery of complex features across the full stack using: - Backend: Kotlin/Java Spring Boot microservices, containerised and deployed on Azure Container Apps, exposing REST/OpenAPI APIs and integrating with other services and data stores. - Frontend: React/TypeScript, shared design system components, and agreed architectural patterns (e.g. Nx, micro frontends), deployed on Azure Static Web Apps. Produce clear Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for significant technical decisions, documenting context, options, trade-offs, and outcomes that align with organisation-wide standards. Own and improve SLOs and operational metrics for the squad’s services; monitor error budgets, participate in incident response, and drive improvements to reduce incidents and MTTR. Champion secure and compliant design: - Apply secure coding practices and threat modelling. - Ensure logging, audit trails, and data handling meet regulatory and privacy requirements. - Ensure accessibility standards are met in user-facing features. Strengthen observability and operational excellence within the squad (metrics, tracing, logs, dashboards, runbooks, alerts) and ensure they are used effectively. Drive improvements to the squad’s developer experience (CI/CD pipelines, test strategy, local development workflows, release practices) in line with wider engineering standards and cloud deployment patterns. Model responsible AI-assisted engineering: - Use GitHub Copilot and other approved tools to improve speed, quality, and consistency. - Validate and refine AI-generated code to ensure correctness, maintainability, and compliance. - Contribute to documentation and feedback loops on AI usage in partnership with Staff Engineers. Provide technical mentorship and line management for Full Stack Engineers in the squad, supporting their growth in technical skills, ownership, and delivery capability. Collaborate closely with Product Managers and Designers to ensure technical feasibility, shape solutions, and align technical work with product goals and timelines. Maintain high standards of code quality, testing, documentation, and maintainability across the squad’s codebase, actively reducing technical debt. Personal Attributes & Experience - Strong experience designing, building, and operating Spring Boot microservices in Kotlin or Java, including REST APIs, integrations, and containerised deployments on a major cloud platform (Azure preferred; AWS or Google Cloud also relevant). - Strong knowledge of React and TypeScript, with practical experience building accessible, performant, and maintainable user interfaces. - Proven ability to design robust, scalable solutions within a squad context, aligning with broader architectural guidelines. - Good understanding of distributed systems fundamentals (resilience, latency, consistency, failure modes) appropriate to microservices. - Strong understanding of secure coding practices (e.g. OWASP), privacy considerations, and security/compliance expectations in production systems. - Experience with observability tooling, incident response, and CI/CD pipelines; familiarity with Azure DevOps Pipelines and Azure deployment services is beneficial. - Demonstrated ability to improve codebase quality through refactoring, better abstractions, and clear boundaries between modules and services. - Experience mentoring engineers (pairing, code review, design guidance) and some experience of line management or formal coaching responsibilities. - Experience using GenAI tools (such as GitHub Copilot) to improve productivity and code quality, with a clear understanding of their limitations and validation requirements. - Strong communication and collaboration skills, able to work effectively with Product, Design, and other stakeholders to deliver outcomes. Working at Allica Bank At Allica Bank we want to ensure our employees have the right tools and environment in which to succeed in their role and in support of our customers. Our employees are at the heart of everything we do, so our benefits are designed with you in mind: - Full onboarding support and continued development opportunities - Options for flexible working - Regular social activities - Pension contributions - Discretionary bonus scheme - Private health cover - Life assurance - Family friendly policies including enhanced Maternity & Paternity leave Don’t tick every box? Don’t worry if you don’t have all the skills or requirements listed on the job description. If you think you’ll be a good fit, we’d still love to hear from you! Flexible working We know the ‘9-to-5’ isn’t right for everyone. That’s why Allica Bank is fully committed to flexible and hybrid working. Please let us know what is best for you and, if we can, we will do our best to accommodate. Diversity We’re a diverse bunch here at Allica, with all kinds of experiences, backgrounds and lifestyles. Our openness and differences make us stronger, and we want everybody to feel comfortable bringing as much of themselves to work with them as they like.