Staff Engineer (Tech Lead), Full-Stack

Are you a Staff Engineer ready to lead complex integrations, APIs and data architecture for a major UK Defence programme? Join 4C Strategies and shape the future of military readiness. We’re connecting Exonaut® to a fast-growing landscape of systems — a data lakehouse, customer ERP platforms, optimisation engines and partner platforms — on one of the most significant training transformation programmes in UK defence. We want a Staff Engineer to act as technical lead for the team: a full-stack engineer whose centre of gravity is backend and integration work, energised by ambiguity and able to take a vaguely-defined need, shape it with the team, and build it across the stack.

Responsibilities

Act as technical lead for the team, leading through influence rather than formal authority and partnering closely with Engineering Managers and Product Managers; Own and evolve parts of the Exonaut platform itself, not just wire systems together; Hold the technical vision for our work on the programme, in close partnership with Engineering Management, Product and Delivery, and stay close enough to the code to lead by example; Figure out and build how Exonaut talks to a data lakehouse, customer ERP systems, optimisation engines and partner platforms, often from a rough idea rather than a finished spec, with maintainability, observability and security designed in from the start; Build full-stack features on the Exonaut platform, including backend services and APIs and user-facing interfaces; Work across Java and SQL on the backend, Angular on the front-end, plus pipeline and data tooling, and introduce event-driven and change-data-capture (CDC) patterns where they keep data flowing in near-real-time; Lead design sessions and steward the architecture across data, integrations and APIs, driving simplicity and sustainability; Help raise engineering standards around code quality, automated testing, CI/CD and observability, building pipelines and test automation; Mentor and coach engineers across the team, including mentoring Senior Engineers toward Staff-level scope, and help grow the full-stack and integration engineering practice; Represent engineering with customers, partners and 4C peers, presenting technical work externally; Work directly with project managers, designers, engineers and customer technical and non-technical stakeholders to draw out needs and explain technical trade-offs

Requirements

Experienced full-stack engineer who still enjoys writing code, with several years operating at Senior Engineer level or above and a track record of guiding non-trivial technical work across a team or cluster of teams; Comfortable building backend services and APIs (REST and/or event-based), integrating with third-party systems such as ERP platforms, data stores and external engines, and building the front-end on top, with a good grasp of integration patterns, authentication and performance; Strong Java and SQL, with working familiarity with Angular (or a comparable modern front-end framework); Treats version control, code review, automated testing and CI/CD as part of building; Comfortable being a team's technical point of reference, leading through influence, partnership and consistently good judgement; Energised rather than unsettled by ambiguity; able to pick up a new stack quickly, define the problem, and make sound calls when requirements are moving; Sound judgement around system and data design, including integrating with a data warehouse / lakehouse, and good instincts for when to use streaming or event-driven approaches versus batch; Pragmatic about quality, instruments what they build, and cares about production operation; Strong communicator who can hold technical conversations with engineers and plain-language conversations with project managers, designers and senior customer stakeholders, including in regulated environments; Mentor who lifts people around them and can point to engineers whose growth they've helped shape; Fluent written and spoken English; UK national and eligible to obtain UK Security Clearance (SC); Genuine interest in the mission

Nice to have

Current UK Security Clearance (SC)

Benefits

Pension Scheme with 5% employer contribution; Private healthcare including dental; Enhanced family leave (maternity, paternity and adoption); 25 days holidays (plus bank holidays); Life Assurance; Cycle to work scheme; Company social events