The posting
Engineering Team Lead (Backend Java)
The Job in Short
The ETL is the "Captain" of a single squad. This is a "player-coach" role focused on delivery predictability, people leadership, and day-to-day execution. You are a Senior+ Engineer who manages people, not a manager who used to code; if you cannot open the IDE and debug a production issue, you cannot perform this role.
We are looking for technologists who want to stay deep in the technology whilst taking on genuine people leadership and delivery accountability. You will spend roughly half your time on system design, architecture and technical decision-making, with around a fifth of your time in the codebase directly through code reviews, debugging and unblocking. The remaining time is invested in your people: coaching, calibration, hiring and building a team that delivers predictably and sustainably.
What you will do
Technical Leadership (circa 70% of the role)
- System Design and Architecture: Lead and participate in design reviews, RFCs and architecture decisions alongside Staff Engineers. Ensure security and scalability are embedded from the start.
- Hands-on Contribution: Maintain your technical credibility through active code reviews, debugging production issues and unblocking your team. You write code, read code and understand the systems your squad owns.
- Quality and Engineering Excellence: Champion modern engineering practices including CI/CD pipelines, test automation, observability and quality gates. Drive production-readiness and robust release management.
- BS Detector: Use your technical depth to spot unrealistic estimates, fragile designs or risk blind spots before they become delivery problems.
- Emergency Response: During critical incidents, jump in technically or coordinate the response. You are comfortable leading under pressure.
- AI-Native Engineering: Lead adoption of agentic tooling, LLM workflows and AI automation within your squad to accelerate the development lifecycle. Experiment with code generation, test automation and AI-assisted productivity tools.
People Leadership (circa 10% of the role)
- Talent Development: Own meaningful 1:1s, performance calibration, and evidence-based career development for your squad of 6 to 9 engineers. Create tailored growth plans and act as a genuine coach.
- Team Health: Build and sustain psychological safety, team resilience and a healthy engineering culture. Detect and resolve friction early. Maintain sustainable pace even under delivery pressure.
- Hiring and Succession: Manage hiring decisions and onboarding to build teams with the right technical competencies and seniority balance. Plan for succession and knowledge continuity.
- Conflict Resolution: Mediate interpersonal or cross-team conflicts early to protect team cohesion and delivery momentum.
Delivery and Execution (circa 20% of the role)
- Delivery Mastery: Optimise the squad's idea-to-production cycle time. Strengthen delivery predictability through empirical measurement, process improvement and proactive blocker removal.
- Stakeholder Partnership: Collaborate closely with Product Managers and Domain Architects to translate business needs into technical outcomes. Push back on unrealistic scope with data, not opinion.
- Continuous Improvement: Drive improvement in delivery capability, operating models and tooling. Promote visibility and transparency through effective tracking and communication.
What you will bring
Technical Depth
- 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with recent production code contributions.
- Strong grounding in system design, architecture patterns and modern engineering tooling.
- T-shaped profile: deep expertise in at least one area with broad competence across the full stack.
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, test automation, observability and quality-focused development practices.
- Enthusiasm for AI tooling and a willingness to lead its adoption within your team.
People and Leadership
- An explicit desire to lead people whilst remaining an active technical contributor.
- High emotional intelligence and resilience under pressure.
- Experience coaching engineers, running effective 1:1s and providing constructive feedback.
- Ability to create inclusive, engaging team environments with a strong engineering culture.
- Comfortable addressing underperformance constructively when needed.
Delivery and Communication
- Skilled in Agile delivery methods (Scrum, Kanban) with experience managing delivery risk and stakeholder expectations.
- A strong unblocker who translates and synthesises rather than simply relaying messages.
- Confident communicator who adjusts style for different audiences and fosters open dialogue.
- Track record of building and scaling teams, processes and delivery capability.
About BackBase
Backbase is the maker of the AI-native Banking OS, the operating system that turns fragmented banking operations into a Unified Frontline. Customers, employees and AI agents work as one across digital channels, front office and operations. Every actor operates from the same truth, every decision carries a full audit trail, and every capability compounds on the same foundation.
We have been building banking software since 2003. Today, 150+ banks run on Backbase, supported by 2,000+ employees globally, 4,000+ certified experts and 16 offices across 5 continents. 50% of our team works in R&D, which means engineering is not a support function here; it is the core of what we do.
