Lead Full Stack Kotlin Developer

Hippo Digital; Manchester; On-site; GBP 59,000 - 99,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension

Holidays

Wellbeing support

Private cover options

Salary sacrifice schemes

Volunteering opportunities

Relocation support

Job summary

Hippo Digital in Manchester is seeking a highly skilled Kotlin-focused backend engineer with extensive experience across the Java/JVM ecosystem, Spring Boot, and microservices. You will lead delivery teams, design scalable backend services, and work across cloud platforms.

The role involves collaborating with clients, mentoring engineers, shaping pipelines with Docker/Kubernetes, and supporting GOV/NHS projects.

Qualifications

• Extensive Kotlin experience with full dev lifecycle across JVM stack.
• Proven track record leading delivery teams delivering robust solutions.
• Back-end design with Kotlin + Spring Boot and REST APIs.
• Experience in microservices and RESTful services.
• Cloud and DevOps experience: Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms.
• IaC tools like CloudFormation or Terraform.
• CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins or Azure DevOps.
• Frontend exposure with Angular, React, TypeScript.
• GOV/NHS consultancy experience.
• Migration of legacy Java to Kotlin.
• Async messaging with Kafka and Kotlin coroutines/Flow.
• Kotlin-native frameworks like Ktor or Arrow.

Responsibilities

• Serve as technical SME within the squad, delivering user-centred software aligned to business needs.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to explore, design, and deliver solutions for complex client problems.
• Continuously prioritise and review the delivery team's workload.
• Design and manage software development and deployment pipelines, resolve bottlenecks.
• Lead recruitment and onboard engineers, mentoring and coaching the team.

Skills

Kotlin

Java/JVM

Delivery leadership

REST APIs

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Front-end basics

Kafka / reactive

Kotlin Coroutines/Flow

Tools

Spring Boot

Spring Framework

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

CloudFormation

Jenkins

Azure DevOps

Ktor

Arrow

Job description

Salary: £59,000 - 99,000 per year

Requirements

• Extensive experience in Kotlin and the full development lifecycle delivering user-centred digital solutions, with a strong foundation in the Java/JVM ecosystem.
• Proven track record of leading a delivery team to deliver high-quality, robust, and scalable solutions.
• Expertise in building back-end services using Kotlin with Spring Boot and the wider Spring Framework, including Spring MVC, Spring Security, and REST APIs, leveraging Kotlin idioms and coroutines where applicable.
• Experience in microservices design and architecture, including RESTful API services and Kotlin-based microservice patterns.
• Expertise in public cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, and DevOps practices, including containerisation with Docker and Kubernetes.
• In-depth knowledge of Infrastructure as Code tools such as CloudFormation or Terraform.
• Proficiency in CI/CD tools such as Jenkins or Azure DevOps.
• Experience with front-end technologies such as Angular, React, and TypeScript.
• Previous experience working on GOV/NHS projects or in a consultancy environment.
• Experience migrating legacy Java codebases to idiomatic Kotlin.
• Experience with asynchronous messaging systems such as Kafka and Kotlin Coroutines/Flow for reactive programming.
• Familiarity with Kotlin-native frameworks such as Ktor or functional programming libraries such as Arrow.

Responsibilities

• Act as a technical SME within the squad to produce and ensure user-centred software is developed based on business requirements and best practice.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues and stakeholders to explore, design, and deliver solutions to complex client problems.
• Continuously review and prioritise the delivery teams workload.
• Design and manage software development and deployment pipelines, resolving issues and potential bottlenecks.Communicate and present prototypes, solutions, and progress to internal and external stakeholders in a clear, concise manner.
• Lead the recruitment and onboarding of other engineers and support their professional development through mentoring and coaching.

Technologies

• API
• AWS
• Angular
• Azure
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• DevOps
• Docker
• Flow
• GCP
• Support
• JVM
• Java
• Jenkins
• Kafka
• Kotlin
• Ktor
• Kubernetes
• MVC
• REST
• React
• Security
• Spring
• Spring Boot
• Terraform
• TypeScript
• microservices
• Fullstack

More

We are a rapidly growing digital consultancy working at the intersection of strategy, design, and technology to solve complex problems and create lasting value for public and private sector clients. We design with empathy and build for impact through data-informed evidence, human-centred design, and software engineering. Our collaborative and agile culture empowers our teams to make a genuine impact, and we offer a competitive salary alongside a wide range of benefits including pension, holidays, wellbeing support, private cover options, salary sacrifice schemes, and volunteering opportunities. We are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we support an accessible recruitment process. We are headquartered in Leeds with offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, and Bristol, and candidates should be open to travel and working on site at least two days per week, with relocation support available.

last updated 36 week of 2026