Java Technical Lead

Overview

About The Role

Technical Team Lead – Java

1. Team Leadership & Ownership

• Lead, mentor, and guide a team of Java backend developers.
• Take ownership of the team’s day-to-day execution, priorities, delivery progress, and technical output.
• Ensure all team members have clear responsibilities, priorities, and expected deliverables.
• Break down technical work into clear tasks and assign them effectively across the team.
• Monitor team progress closely and proactively identify delays, risks, dependencies, and blockers.
• Act as the first escalation point for the team and help unblock issues quickly.
• Ensure the team is working efficiently, with clear communication and accountability.
• Support onboarding, knowledge sharing, coaching, and continuous development of team members.
• Promote ownership, collaboration, technical discipline, and a delivery-focused mindset within the team.

2. Technical Leadership

• Provide strong technical direction across backend systems, integrations, and trading-related services.
• Lead technical design discussions and ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business needs.
• Conduct code reviews and ensure engineering standards, best practices, and clean coding principles are followed.
• Challenge technical decisions where needed and ensure the team follows the correct architecture and implementation approach.
• Support developers with complex technical issues and ensure the right solutions are implemented.
• Drive technical documentation, implementation plans, and knowledge sharing across the team.
• Ensure technical decisions are clearly communicated to Product, QA, DevOps, and other stakeholders.

3. Backend Architecture & Development

• Design, develop, and maintain backend services using Java, preferably Java 17+.
• Build and enhance microservices, REST APIs, event-driven services, and backend modules for trading workflows.
• Work on trading platform integrations, liquidity management systems, price feeds, risk engines, execution services, and internal backend tools.
• Apply modern architecture practices such as domain-driven design, CQRS, event-driven architecture, and event sourcing where relevant.
• Work with Vaadin framework for internal UI and console development where required.
• Understand and contribute to mixed Java/Kotlin environments where applicable.
• Collaborate with mobile teams and understand API integration requirements for iOS Swift and Android/Kotlin applications.
• Ensure backend services are reliable, scalable, secure, and aligned with platform requirements.

4. System Performance, Stability & Reliability

• Build and maintain low-latency, high-availability backend components.
• Optimize system performance through concurrency tuning, JVM tuning, GC optimization, and efficient service design.
• Support performance testing, load testing, and production-readiness activities.
• Lead or support incident investigation, root cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Ensure production issues are properly analyzed, documented, and followed up with preventive actions.
• Collaborate with DevOps, Cloud, QA, and monitoring teams to improve system reliability.
• Promote a strong engineering culture around stability, observability, and operational excellence.

5. Delivery & Project Ownership

• Drive technical delivery across sprint planning, task breakdown, execution, and release readiness.
• Work closely with Product Owners and Product Managers to understand requirements, clarify scope, and define realistic delivery timelines.
• Challenge unclear requirements, incomplete analysis, or unrealistic timelines where needed.
• Ensure technical dependencies, risks, and blockers are identified early and communicated clearly.
• Track delivery progress and make sure the team is moving according to agreed priorities.
• Ensure releases are delivered with the required quality, documentation, testing support, and technical sign-off.
• Maintain clear communication with Product, QA, DevOps, and management regarding status, risks, and delivery expectations.
• Take ownership of delivery outcomes, not only technical implementation.

6. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Work closely with QA and QA Automation teams to support testing, integration testing, regression testing, and load testing.
• Collaborate with DevOps and Cloud teams on deployments, CI/CD pipelines, environments, monitoring, and infrastructure needs.
• Coordinate with Mobile teams to ensure backend APIs and services meet mobile application requirements.
• Work with Trading, Risk, Dealing, Compliance, and Operations teams where business or system knowledge is required.
• Ensure technical communication between teams is clear, structured, and action-oriented.

7. Engineering Standards & Process Improvement

• Enforce coding standards, code review practices, documentation, and technical governance.
• Improve development processes, estimation accuracy, release readiness, and operational efficiency.
• Identify recurring issues within the team and propose practical improvements.
• Support the adoption of automation, AI tools, and engineering productivity improvements.
• Encourage the team to use modern tools and practices to increase speed, quality, and maintainability.
• Ensure the team follows agreed engineering, security, and release processes.

Required Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience, with strong hands-on Java development.
• Strong experience with Java 17+ and modern backend development practices.
• Proven experience (2+ years) of leading a technical team (7+ members) as a team or technical lead.
• Experience managing team delivery, task breakdown, estimation, technical planning, and execution.
• Strong understanding of microservices architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience designing and developing REST APIs and backend integrations.
• Experience with event-driven systems, messaging, and asynchronous processing.
• Strong understanding of system performance, scalability, reliability, and production support.
• Experience with cloud environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience working with DevOps teams on CI/CD, deployments, and environment management.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to lead with ownership, accountability, and minimal supervision.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to make decisions under pressure.

Preferred Skills

• Experience in Forex, CFD, Fintech, Trading, Banking, or financial systems.
• Experience with trading platform integrations, liquidity providers, price feeds, execution systems, or risk engines.
• Knowledge of FIX Protocol and FIX Market Data.
• Experience with price feed aggregation engines.
• Experience with Vaadin framework.
• Knowledge of Kotlin and mixed Java/Kotlin environments.
• Understanding of mobile trading app architecture and backend API requirements for Swift/Kotlin applications.
• Experience with monitoring tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, or similar.
• Exposure to financial regulations such as FSA, DFSA, CySEC, FCA, ASIC, or similar.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, or cloud-native architecture.
• Experience using AI tools to improve development productivity, code quality, documentation, and delivery efficiency.

Personal Attributes

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Proactive and hands-on leadership style.
• Able to stay on top of multiple priorities and ensure nothing is left unmanaged.
• Strong technical judgment and ability to challenge decisions constructively.
• Delivery-focused and able to drive teams toward clear outcomes.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment.
• Strong communicator with the ability to align technical teams and business stakeholders.
• Able to mentor, coach, and raise the performance level of the team.
• Practical, structured, and solution-oriented.