Lead Back End Engineer
Remuneration: Competitive
Location: London or Newcastle
Role Type: Permanent
Key Work Benefits
We take the health and happiness of our employees seriously and we’re consistently searching for new ways to make mkodo the best place to work. From retirement planning to a wellness offering supporting mental & physical wellbeing.
Remote/Flexible working
Generous Holidays
Tech Scheme
Employee Assist Program
Bonus and Profit Share
Birthday Off
Team Socials
Pension Contribution
The Role - Lead Back End Engineer
If this is the opportunity you have been waiting for, to work in a fast-paced company with cutting-edge technology, please send your CV to jobs@mkodo.com
Apply HereKey Skills and Attributes
- Strong backend engineering experience, ideally including Java (Java 11+) and Spring Boot.
- Proven ability to design and lead backend architectures for complex systems.
- Familiarity with cloud environments (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
- Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging platforms such as Kafka.
- Strong understanding of RESTful APIs, microservices, and distributed system design.
- Knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and modern deployment practices.
- Skilled mentor with the ability to influence technical direction across teams.
- Strong problem-solving skills, balancing technical, product, and delivery considerations.
- Comfortable in agile environments using Git-based SCM and tools like Jira or Redmine.
- Awareness of compliance frameworks such as ISO27001 and PCI.
About the Role
Reporting to a Software Engineering Manager or Head of Engineering, we are seeking a Lead Backend Software Engineer to be the go-to authority for backend engineering, setting the technical vision, guiding architecture, and driving improvements in tools, processes, and delivery practices. You’ll remain hands-on for critical work, but your greatest impact will come from technical leadership, enabling teams to deliver robust, scalable, and secure services.
With a strong foundation in backend technologies, including Java and Spring Boot, and event-driven systems such as Kafka, you’ll influence systems well beyond your own code, ensuring architectural integrity and high engineering standards across multiple teams. You’ll play a pivotal role in aligning technical strategy with business goals and ensuring our backend capabilities are future-ready.
Main Responsibilities
- Technical Leadership
- Define and evolve backend architecture to ensure scalability, maintainability, and performance.
- Set coding standards and champion secure development practices (e.g. OWASP).
- Influence technology choices, frameworks, and tools to support engineering excellence.
- Oversee improvements to CI/CD pipelines, build processes, and operational workflows.
- Can clearly and confidently articulate risk of technical problems to non technical stakeholders (e.g legal, product owner, designer)
- Leads projects and features to good outcomes, ensuring appropriate engineering decisions are made to factor in technical debt, systems design, stability/reliability, monitoring/observability and business need.
- Hands-On Guidance
- Contribute to key backend systems when your expertise is needed.
- Review and refine critical code, ensuring alignment with architectural goals and best practices.
- Provide technical oversight for major initiatives, ensuring architectural soundness.
- Mentoring & Collaboration
- Coach, mentor, and develop engineers, raising capability across the backend discipline.
- Facilitate design discussions, code reviews, and collaborative problem-solving sessions.
- Build consensus for architectural and technical decisions across teams and stakeholders.
- Continuous Improvement
- Identify and proactively resolve technical debt.
- Introduce new backend technologies and approaches that improve reliability and delivery speed.
- Promote engineering practices that support scalable, secure, and maintainable systems.
- Community & Advocacy
- Proactively stays up to date with technology trends in their area, and uses this knowledge to contribute thoughts on engineering strategy.
- Share knowledge through presentations, workshops, and internal forums.
- Support recruitment by assessing candidates and promoting a strong engineering culture.
- Ensure backend systems comply with relevant standards such as ISO27001 and PCI.
More benefits
mkodo is a great place to work, with excellent benefits comprising:
- Hybrid/Flexible Working
- Quarterly team events
- Birthday Holiday
- Christmas Day-Off
- Generous Holiday Allowance
- Tech Loan Scheme
- Performance bonus & profit share scheme
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Life insurance and income protection
- Travel Loan scheme
- Supplies of fresh fruits, cereals, biscuits, nibbles, etc. in the offices
- Relevant training and training budget.
- Digital Nomad Policy
- Generous refer a friend scheme
Graduate development journey
Day 1
Grads onboarded as a cohort and focus on specific roles
First 2 weeks
Onboarding sessions and initial training
2 weeks
Grad team project with mentoring support
3 months
Grads present project to execs/senior leadership team. Start more compex project.
6 months
Present second project to the execs/senior leadership team. Grads join a client project team. Tech debt and support issues.
9 months
Start contributing to client deliverables.
12 months
Graduate from Grad scheme and become billable resource.
or send your CV to jobs@mkodo.com
Recruitment Process
For our web, Android and iOS engineering roles, we follow the below process:
For our roles, we follow the below process:
For our graduate roles, we follow the below process:
Review
We review applications and screen against our requirement criteria
Intro call
Successful applicants are invited to a 30-minute chat with a member of our team to get to know you a little, and tell you more about the role
Technical Exercise
You will be invited to a partake in a Pair Programming session with two of our Engineers, to assess your level of technical and coding abilities
Final Interview
A final meet with our HR team, and a Head of Engineering - also the chance to ask any questions about the role, and what it's like to work at mkodo
Offer
We make an offer to the person we feel most suitable for the role and business
Review
We review applications and screen against our requirement criteria
Intro call
Successful applicants are invited to a 30-minute chat with a member of our team to get to know you a little, and tell you more about the role
Skills Assessment
You will be invited to a second stage in the process to meet with more members of the team, and to show off your skills in your area of expertise. There will be the opportunity to ask any questions, and find out more about the role, and also to discuss your experience in more detail.
Final Interview
A final meet with our HR team, and a Head of Engineering - also the chance to ask any questions about the role, and what it's like to work at mkodo
Offer
We make an offer to the person we feel most suitable for the role and business
Review
We review applications and screen against our requirement criteria
Intro call
Successful applicants are invited to a 30-minute chat with a member of our team to get to know you a little, and tell you more about the role
1-hour interview
You're invited to a second interview with developers you'll work with. It's a no-code whiteboard session to evaluate your problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills. Show us how you tackle challenges!
Offer
We’ll make offers to the successful graduates to join the cohort in early September
or send your CV to jobs@mkodo.com
Graduate Developer Scheme
mkodo operates its own 4-time, award-nominated graduate developer scheme across London and the Northeast. Check out our grad scheme page to learn more.
Learn More
