Senior Software Engineer / Architect - Life & Pensions

iHeadHunt•Manchester, TN

67d•Hybrid

About The Position

Festina Finance is seeking a senior technical contributor to help adapt, architect, and scale its Life & Pensions platform for the UK market. The role combines hands-on backend engineering with system design, architectural decision-making, and technical leadership. You will work closely with senior product, architecture, and engineering colleagues in Denmark while staying connected to UK business, customer, and market requirements. You will translate complex regulatory, business, and customer needs into robust technical solutions while safeguarding the integrity and long-term maintainability of the core platform. This is not a traditional people-management role: you will remain close to the code while taking broader responsibility for technical direction, design decisions, engineering quality, and architectural alignment. As the UK engineering capability grows, you will serve as a senior technical reference point for developers, business specialists, and stakeholders across the UK and Denmark. The primary workplace is Festina Finance’s Manchester City Centre office, with the option to work from home on agreed days in coordination with the team. Occasional travel to Copenhagen is expected for product knowledge and collaboration. Festina Finance is a Danish fintech/software company whose FF Life and Pension platform serves pension administrators, pension funds, insurance companies, and banks across Europe. The company launched in the UK in 2025 and is building its team for the next phase of growth.

Requirements

Strong senior-level backend engineering experience in Java, C#, or comparable technologies.
Experience designing and delivering complex enterprise or distributed software systems.
Strong understanding of APIs, integrations, business-critical backend services, and production software.
Ability to contribute to architecture, system design, and technical trade-offs beyond implementation.
Experience taking technical ownership across larger solutions, components, or platforms.
Ability to work confidently with senior technical stakeholders and business or domain specialists.
Motivation to remain hands-on while taking broader responsibility for technical direction.

Nice To Haves

Experience in pensions, insurance, banking, financial services, or another regulated software environment.
Experience as a Technical Lead, Architect, Principal-level engineer, or senior technical reference point.
A Computer Science degree or equivalent technical foundation.

Responsibilities

Shape the technical evolution of Festina’s Life & Pensions platform for the UK market.
Translate complex UK business and regulatory requirements into scalable technical solutions.
Contribute to system design and architectural decisions across services, APIs, and integrations.
Implement pensions-specific business logic within a long-lived enterprise platform.
Design and build REST APIs and integrations with surrounding enterprise systems.
Support technical decisions concerning maintainability, scalability, data quality, and production robustness.
Contribute to automated testing, performance, and engineering quality.
Review technical approaches and help establish strong engineering practices as the UK team grows.
Work with product and architecture teams to balance UK-specific requirements with the integrity of the core platform.
Provide technical direction and act as a senior technical reference point while remaining hands-on.