Senior Forward Deployment Engineer

Salary: £48,000 - 68,000 per year

Requirements:

• Extensive hands-on software engineering experience focused on developing and maintaining production applications
• Strong Java and JVM-based development experience
• Strong TypeScript skills are valued for Node.js-centric projects
• Proficiency with the Spring ecosystem and modernizing Java enterprise applications
• Recent personal involvement in coding, debugging, and reviewing production code
• Practical experience with Test-Driven Development across multiple testing frameworks
• Solid understanding of unit, integration, and regression testing
• Experience creating automated test suites integrated within CI/CD pipelines
• Experience designing release automation and quality gates
• Strong knowledge of secure coding practices, vulnerability remediation, and dependency risk management
• Ability to analyze application impacts before applying security fixes
• Experience upgrading runtimes, frameworks, libraries, and container platforms such as Docker or OpenShift
• Experience managing Linux environments, preferably Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Familiarity with build tools such as Maven, Gradle, or npm
• Advanced Git workflows and comprehensive production-debugging techniques
• Understanding of application observability, exception handling, and production readiness
• Fundamental knowledge of distributed and critical system engineering principles
• Demonstrated ownership of complex technical work through all stages, from design to production handover
• Strong client-facing communication and technical leadership skills
• Ability to coach engineers and implement sustainable engineering standards
• Proficient and responsible use of AI coding tools to enhance engineering, testing, and delivery outcomes

Responsibilities:

• Lead targeted technical engagements addressing security, testing, release, resilience, and legacy technology challenges with development teams
• Assess application code, dependencies, runtime environment, test coverage, deployment architecture, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and operational risks
• Write, debug, review, and enhance production-quality code and configuration throughout engagements
• Define and implement practical modernization and remediation plans with clear priorities, dependencies, risks, and measurable outcomes
• Develop or improve unit, integration, component, contract, and deployment smoke tests using Test-Driven Development practices
• Select appropriate automation-testing approaches per application and drive implementation, including the use of AI coding assistance
• Source suitable test data and implement secure data masking for lower environments
• Conduct vulnerability triage, root-cause and dependency reachability analyses, remediation prioritization, secure code changes, and regression testing
• Upgrade Java, JVM, NPM, Spring, open-source libraries, internal dependencies, installed software, base images, and operating systems to supported versions
• Establish sustainable dependency-management processes with continuous library updates using Renovate or equivalent tools
• Modernize legacy applications and middleware stacks, including those deployed on WebSphere or WebLogic
• Containerize applications using Docker and support deployment to OpenShift
• Improve source control, branch management, pull-request, and code-review practices
• Design, implement, and optimize CI/CD pipelines to ensure safe, repeatable, automated, and easy releases
• Automate database changes using Liquibase or equivalent migration tools
• Automate installed software and environment changes using Ansible or equivalent configuration management tools
• Implement secure coding patterns, secrets management, authentication, authorization, and least-privilege controls
• Introduce standard observability patterns, including structured logging, application metrics, tracing, dashboards, alerting, and actionable health checks
• Enhance exception handling, operational diagnostics, rollback procedures, and production-validation controls
• Design or improve resilient deployment architectures, including hot-hot cross-datacenter deployments where required
• Lead technical workshops and effectively communicate technical decisions, risks, blockers, trade-offs, and progress to engineering, security, architecture, operations, project management, and stakeholders
• Provide technical leadership through code reviews, coaching, reusable standards, documentation, and knowledge transfer to development teams
• Take ownership from initial assessment through implementation, production deployment, stabilization, and handover

Technologies:

• AI
• Ansible
• CI/CD
• DevOps
• Docker
• Git
• Gradle
• Support
• JVM
• Java
• Linux
• Liquibase
• Maven
• NPM
• OpenShift
• Renovate
• Security
• Spring
• TypeScript
• Websphere
• NodeJS
• Dynatrace
• ELK
• Flyway
• Grafana
• IBM
• IBM WebSphere
• Kubernetes
• OpenTelemetry
• Oracle
• Prometheus
• Splunk
• Spring Boot

More:

The project is focused on improving the security, release reliability, maintainability, and operational resilience of business-critical banking applications. Forward Deployed Engineers will conduct targeted, hands-on engagements with development teams facing challenges with vulnerability remediation, automated testing, legacy technology, production stability, or safe and rapid release cadence. The role combines senior software engineering, DevOps, SRE, test automation, application security, and legacy modernization, with approximately 70% of the work involving hands-on coding and configuration. The technical scope includes building automated test suites, remediating security vulnerabilities, performing dependency and reachability analysis, upgrading Java and NPM runtimes, modernizing Spring and legacy middleware applications, improving CI/CD pipelines, containerizing applications, automating deployments, and introducing standard observability and resilience patterns. The Expert FDE is expected to lead complex engagements, work directly with development and client stakeholders, define remediation approaches, implement critical changes personally, and enable client teams to maintain improved engineering practices.

last updated 34 week of 2026