Technology Lead

Insight Global; Chester; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Insight Global is seeking a senior Java platform engineer to drive performance, resiliency, and platform governance across multiple delivery teams. You will stay hands-on while providing architectural direction and technical leadership for enterprise-scale Java applications.

The role focuses on JVM tuning, Spring Boot microservices, observability, and AI-powered tooling to boost development productivity and operational analytics in a complex payments-enabled environment.

Qualifications

• Proven technical leadership responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical health, performance, scalability, and resilience of a portfolio of business-critical Java applications.

Skills

Java/J2EE

JVM performance tuning

Spring Boot

REST APIs

Microservices architecture

Event-driven design

CI/CD / DevOps practices

Agile / Waterfall

Communication skills

Tools

Kafka

Dynatrace

AppDynamics

Splunk

Grafana

ELK

Prometheus

GenAI / LLM tools

Job description

This individual will drive platform performance, JVM optimisation, Spring Boot engineering standards, application resiliency, observability, and technology innovation across multiple delivery teams. The successful candidate will remain hands-on whilst providing technical leadership, architectural direction, and engineering governance across a complex enterprise estate. Whilst the applications support payments processing, prior payments or banking experience is not required. We are seeking a strong technologist with deep Java expertise, platform engineering experience, and a passion for solving large-scale engineering challenges.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the technical health, performance, scalability, and resilience of a portfolio of business-critical Java applications.
• Act as the technical authority for JVM performance tuning, memory management, garbage collection optimisation, thread analysis, heap diagnostics, and application profiling.
• Lead the design, development, and optimisation of Spring Boot microservices, distributed systems, event-driven applications, and enterprise APIs.
• Drive engineering best practices across architecture, coding standards, observability, non-functional requirements, and software delivery.
• Partner with DevOps and SRE teams to improve CI/CD pipelines, production stability, platform reliability, and operational excellence.
• Champion modern engineering approaches including intelligent automation, AI-assisted development, operational analytics, and emerging technology adoption.
• Provide day-to-day technical leadership, mentoring engineers, performing design reviews, and guiding technical decision-making across multiple delivery teams.
• Collaborate with architecture, infrastructure, security, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing solutions.

Must-Have Experience:

• Proven technical leadership responsibilities.
• Expert-level experience developing and supporting enterprise-scale applications using Java/J2EE.
• Deep expertise tuning and troubleshooting JVM-based applications in production environments, including garbage collection optimisation, heap analysis, memory management, thread analysis, performance diagnostics, and application profiling.
• Extensive experience designing, building, and supporting Spring Boot microservices within large-scale enterprise environments.
• Strong expertise in REST APIs, distributed systems, microservices architecture, and event-driven design patterns.
• Experience with messaging and streaming technologies such as Kafka, MQ, or similar.
• Strong experience with application observability, monitoring, and production diagnostics using tools such as Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Splunk, Grafana, ELK, or Prometheus.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating and implementing AI-powered solutions within enterprise technology environments, including engineering productivity tooling, intelligent automation, operational analytics, or GenAI/LLM use cases.
• Strong SDLC knowledge (Agile/Waterfall) alongside CI/CD, DevOps practices, automated testing, and release management.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence architecture, engineering strategy, and technical direction across multiple teams.