Senior Software Engineer (Kotlin, Spring Boot)

CreateFuture; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

35 days leave

Private medical insurance

Parental leave

Pension match

Learning & development

Job summary

CreateFuture is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build and scale backend services that drive real client value. You will influence architectural direction, mentor engineers, and embed AI capabilities into delivery.

The role offers hybrid/remote options and sits within a collaborative, growth-focused engineering culture. You will partner with clients and internal teams to deliver secure, high-performance systems while exploring emerging technologies to keep us at the forefront of

Qualifications

• Proven experience shipping production-grade backend services.
• Strong knowledge of Kotlin/Java and Spring ecosystem.
• Experience designing secure, scalable REST APIs.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain scalable, secure backend systems using Kotlin and Spring Boot.
• Lead technical design and architectural discussions with a focus on maintainability and performance.
• Develop and evolve RESTful APIs with security, versioning and reliability in mind.
• Champion engineering excellence with clean code, automated testing, and documentation.
• Drive delivery across multiple initiatives while balancing speed, quality and business value.
• Mentor engineers and collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver client outcomes.

Skills

Spring Boot

Spring Data JPA

Hibernate

REST API design

Microservices

SQL databases

NoSQL databases

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Docker

Kubernetes

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Git

Maven/Gradle

Java

AWS

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Git

Maven

Gradle

Job description

Working at CreateFuture

CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference while always putting people first.

We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years.

Our UK Benefits

• 35 days leave (including bank holidays).
• Private medical insurance.
• Enhanced parental and adoption leave.
• Financial coaching + 5% pension match.
• 40 hours of paid learning and development.

View our full list of UK benefits.

CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row.

Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today.

About the role and team:

Senior Backend Engineer

Build software that matters. Shape the future of engineering.

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Backend Engineer who is passionate about building scalable, high-quality software and helping teams grow. This is more than a hands-on engineering role—you’ll influence technical direction, mentor other engineers, drive architectural decisions, and help us embed AI and automation into the way we deliver value for our clients.

You’ll thrive here if you enjoy solving complex problems, challenging assumptions, collaborating openly, and taking pride in delivering software that makes a real business impact.

What You’ll Do

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will:

• Design, build and maintain scalable, secure and resilient backend systems using Kotlin and Spring Boot
• Lead technical design and architectural discussions, ensuring solutions are maintainable, performant and aligned with best practices.
• Develop and evolve RESTful APIs with a focus on security, versioning, performance and reliability.
• Champion engineering excellence through clean code, automated testing, documentation and code reviews.
• Drive delivery across multiple initiatives while balancing speed, quality and commercial value.
• Mentor engineers through coaching, pairing and constructive feedback, helping raise capability across the team.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to solve problems together and deliver outstanding outcomes for clients.
• Research and evaluate emerging technologies, frameworks and AI capabilities that improve how we build software.
• Promote automation wherever possible, removing repetitive work so teams can focus on solving meaningful problems.
• Contribute to a culture of continuous learning, innovation and technical excellence.

What You’ll Bring

Technical Expertise

You’ll have strong commercial experience with:

• Spring Boot and the wider Spring ecosystem
• Spring Data JPA / Hibernate
• Spring Security including OAuth2 and JWT
• REST API design and implementation
• Microservices and distributed system design
• SQL databases with strong query optimisation skills
• NoSQL databases
• Messaging technologies such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
• Docker and containerised application development
• Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP)
• CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins or GitLab CI
• Git and modern software development workflows
• Observability tooling including logging, metrics and distributed tracing
• Comprehensive testing across unit, integration and functional layers
• Maven or Gradle
• Java concurrency and JVM performance fundamentals

What Success Looks Like

You’ll demonstrate:

Technical Excellence & Craft Mastery

• Write clean, maintainable and highly optimised code.
• Set high standards for quality, testing and documentation.
• Coach others in engineering best practices and modern development techniques.

Architectural Leadership

• Design scalable, resilient and secure systems.
• Make thoughtful architectural decisions that support long-term maintainability.
• Evaluate new technologies and guide adoption where they add value.

Commercial Delivery

• Lead projects from discovery through delivery.
• Understand client challenges and translate them into practical technical solutions.
• Deliver outcomes that create measurable business value.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Lead engineering ceremonies and facilitate productive technical discussions.
• Mentor and develop engineers across the team.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Foster an environment where knowledge sharing and continuous improvement are part of everyday work.

AI & Innovation

• Explore and implement AI-driven approaches that improve engineering efficiency.
• Champion responsible adoption of AI across delivery teams.
• Help shape our engineering practices for the future.

What we’ll offer you:

We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do.

We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed.

We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look.

Our hiring process

We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process.

It usually looks like this:

• Call with our Talent Acquisition Team
• Role specific capability interview

Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens.

Inclusion at CreateFuture

We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work.

If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help.

We look forward to your application!