Lead Development Engineer (D153BCB)

Referment; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Referment is seeking a senior/lead engineer to shape architecture and code across product teams. You will work hands-on across diverse codebases, guiding design decisions and delivering high-impact features while balancing quality and delivery timelines.

You’ll mentor developers, contribute to shared packages, and help evolve SDLC practices for AI-enabled development, with a focus on secure, scalable, and maintainable software.

Qualifications

• You have strong experience with C#/.NET and Azure cloud services.
• Experience architecting scalable solutions and communicating tech to non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to mentor developers and work across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

C#/.NET

Azure PaaS/SaaS

RESTful API design

Azure SQL

CosmosDB/NoSQL

Architectural thinking

Mentoring

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Azure DevOps

Azure Functions

Azure App Services

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