Configuration & Automation Engineer (Java Technical Lead)

Job Title: CA Engineer (Java Skills / Tech Lead)

Location: London - Hybrid

Contract: 6 months, with possibility of extension

Clearance: SC Cleared or eligible to obtain SC clearance

We are currently recruiting for an experienced CA Engineer / Java Technical Lead to support a major technology programme based in London.

The successful candidate will provide strong technical leadership across the design, development and delivery of scalable applications and services. The role requires excellent hands-on Java engineering capability alongside experience working with Kafka, Kubernetes and Python.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership across software engineering and application delivery.
• Lead the design and development of scalable, secure and resilient Java-based solutions.
• Provide technical direction and guidance to engineers within the delivery team.
• Develop and support event-driven and streaming solutions using Apache Kafka.
• Deploy and maintain applications within Kubernetes environments.
• Develop supporting services, automation and integration components using Python.
• Work closely with architects, engineers, DevOps teams and other technical stakeholders.
• Translate technical and business requirements into robust engineering solutions.
• Review code, designs and technical approaches to ensure quality and consistency.
• Support technical decision-making and contribute to engineering standards and best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex application, integration and infrastructure issues.
• Support the delivery of solutions through development, testing, deployment and production.
• Ensure technical solutions meet appropriate security, performance, resilience and scalability requirements.
• Mentor and support other engineers where required.
• Maintain clear and accurate technical documentation.

Essential Skills & Experience

Candidates should have strong commercial experience across the following:

• Java - strong hands‑on development experience.
• Proven experience operating as a Technical Lead, Lead Engineer or Senior Java Engineer.
• Apache Kafka - experience developing or supporting messaging, streaming or event‑driven architectures.
• Kubernetes - experience deploying and supporting containerised applications.
• Python - experience developing applications, services, automation or supporting tooling.
• Strong software engineering and application design principles.
• Experience working with distributed systems and microservice architectures.