Lead Development Engineer (8C81D81)

Referment; Greater London; On-site; GBP 95,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

Referment is seeking a senior or lead engineer to join the engineering function that develops, operates and improves AI-enabled products and services in the UK. You will move between teams, shaping architecture and writing code, and mentor others while delivering robust software.

You will collaborate with product delivery, design scalable solutions, implement automated testing, CI/CD, and maintainable code, while ensuring security and compliance in production.

Qualifications

• Hands-on technical partner to product delivery teams, shaping architecture and options.
• Experience designing AI-enabled development and scalable software solutions.
• Ability to explain complex concepts to technical and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product teams, embedding where useful to drive architecture decisions.
• Identify opportunities to standardise and consolidate reusable components/services.
• Lead evolution of SDLC practices for AI-enabled development and maintain quality.
• Champion automated testing, CI/CD, coding standards and observability.
• Contribute to design/development of shared packages and services.
• Ensure security, compliance, operability and production support across solutions.
• Mentor developers and act as a technical authority translating business needs to solutions.

Skills

C#/.NET

Azure architecture

Mentoring

Stakeholder communication

SDLC optimization

Problem solving

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Azure DevOps

CosmosDB

Azure SQL

App Services

Functions

Table/Queue/Blob Storage

Event Grid

Application Insights

Job description

Referment is working with a UK analytics and actuarial consultancy that combines sector expertise with technology to advise clients across pensions, investment, insurance, energy and health. Technology sits at the centre of how the firm works, both in the products it provides to clients and in the digital services, platforms and applications its own people rely on. You would join the engineering function that develops, operates and continually improves those products and services.

The Role

You'll act as a hands-on technical partner to product delivery teams, working across codebases of varying maturity and technical constraints. Depending on the need, you might help a team assess options and shape an architecture before they take delivery forward themselves, or work alongside them to design and implement the complex, high-impact elements. You'll also contribute to central products, services and shared components, and help shape how the firm builds software as AI changes engineering practice.

• Collaborate with product delivery teams, embedding where useful, to develop technical architecture recommendations and implementation support.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardise or consolidate solutions into reusable components and services.
• Help drive the evolution of SDLC practices for AI-enabled development, reducing friction while maintaining quality and sustainable delivery.
• Champion proportionate engineering practices: automated testing, CI/CD, coding standards, observability, technical debt management and maintainable code.
• Contribute hands-on to the design and development of shared packages and services.
• Work with platform and infrastructure teams to keep solutions secure, compliant, operable and supported in production.
• Mentor developers and act as an approachable technical authority, translating business needs into practical technical options and trade-offs.

What We're Looking For

• Strong, demonstrable experience with C#/.NET.
• Azure PaaS/SaaS offerings, including Functions, App Services, Service Bus, Table/Queue/Blob Storage, Event Grid, Application Insights and Azure Batch.
• ASP.NET WebAPI (RESTful) plus relational (Azure SQL) and non-relational (CosmosDB, Table Storage) databases.
• Azure DevOps.
• Ability to architect well-reasoned solutions pragmatically and explain engineering and technology concepts clearly to technical and business stakeholders.
• Comfortable rapidly upskilling in unfamiliar technologies; a proactive, logical problem-solver who leads by example.
• Strong planning and organisational skills, able to manage several work streams at once while balancing business priorities and quality.

Desirable

• Knowledge of building Generative AI / LLM-powered solutions (OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex).
• Knowledge of effective use of agentic coding tools and techniques.
• Infrastructure as code (Terraform).

This could suit a senior or lead engineer from a product engineering background who enjoys shaping architecture as much as writing code, and who likes moving between teams rather than staying on a single codebase.

#Referment