[Hiring] Lead Software Engineer @Aveni

Role Description

We're looking for a Lead AI Software Engineer to be the most senior technical voice in one of our product squads, working as a technical co-leader alongside the Engineering Manager. You'll own the squad's technical direction and engineering quality end to end, from architectural decision making and hands-on delivery, to mentoring engineers and shaping how we build across the organisation. This role demands genuine depth in AI. You'll be leading LLM powered feature development and setting the standard for how AI tooling amplifies the whole engineering process, combined with the full-stack and cloud-native chops to back it up.

What you'll be doing

• Setting technical direction for your squad.
• Owning architectural decisions, managing technical risk, and representing the engineering perspective at our Architecture Review Board.
• Driving adoption of AI coding tools across the full SDLC, from planning and design through code review, testing, deployment and setting the bar for how the squad works.
• Delivering production grade code across the full stack: Node.js or Python backends, event-driven AWS architecture, and React where the squad needs it.
• Mentoring and growing engineers across AI and full-stack domains, through code reviews, design documents, and day-to-day pairing.
• Collaborating with platform teams to consume shared capabilities and contribute reusable patterns back, not building one-off solutions when a platform component will do.
• Ensuring everything we ship is compliant-by-design, auditable, and built to the standards expected of software in FCA regulated financial services.

Qualifications

• A seasoned engineer with 10+ years of experience, including meaningful time building and operating AI/ML systems in production.
• Real technical leadership: you've set direction, made architectural calls, mentored others, and influenced how a team builds, not just what it ships.
• Strong hands-on AI/LLM skills: prompt engineering, RAG, model evaluation and agent frameworks.
• Deep expertise in Node.js, with solid experience in the other; comfortable switching contexts depending on what the problem needs.
• Cloud-native development on AWS: Serverless, event-driven, Lambda, with an instinct for well designed, maintainable systems.
• A genuine curiosity about where AI is going and the judgment to separate signal from noise when recommending what to adopt.
• An instinct for building responsibly: you care about auditability, compliance, and the downstream impact of what you ship.

Benefits

• Remote-first working across the UK.
• Work abroad policy for when you want a change of scenery.
• Co-working spaces available if you want an office buzz sometimes.
• 34 days holiday (including flexible bank holidays) and your birthday off.
• Company-wide off-sites (yes, karaoke may happen).
• Optional Personal Development Plan.
• Flexible benefits platform: you choose the benefits that matter most to you (not the company).
• Protection essentials: Life Insurance, Income protection, critical illness cover, Pension (up to 5% matched employer contribution and optional increased contributions).
• Private health- and dental care for your peace of mind.
• Potential share options, have a stake in what you’re building.
• Enhanced family leave.