Lead Python Engineer

Lead Python Engineer – £140k + Benefits – Hybrid – FinTech / Distributed Systems

Explore Group has partnered with a high-growth UK FinTech scaling a proprietary, cloud-native financial platform. Backed by solid commercial growth and strong market adoption, they are modernising core transaction and workflow infrastructure—building high-throughput, automated, and secure distributed backend systems designed to handle complex, real-time data flows.

To support the next phase of their technical evolution, they are seeking a Lead Python Engineer to step into a high-impact technical role, helping drive backend reliability and mentoring engineers as the platform scales.

The Role:

• Take ownership of key architectural components, delivering resilient backend services that meet strict performance, security, and low-latency standards.
• Act as a technical leader across the engineering team, championing clean architecture, rigorous testing, and robust engineering standards.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional product, operational, and commercial teams to translate complex domain requirements into elegant, scalable services.
• Identify performance bottlenecks, optimise system throughput, and troubleshoot distributed production challenges.
• Lead and manage a pod to ensure engineering initiatives are hit while still maintaining a hands-on approach.

Key Requirements:

• 6+ years of commercial software engineering experience, with 4+ years dedicated to Python in production environments. FastAPI exp desired.
• Proven track record architecting and scaling resilient backend systems within FinTech, banking, or similarly regulated, data-intensive domains.
• Strong mentoring and technical leadership capabilities, with deep experience elevating code quality via rigorous peer reviews and automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Commercial experience managing an engineering pod of 3+ engineers.
• GCP experience in a commercial capacity is advantageous, but other clouds are welcome.
• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a relevant quantitative discipline (or equivalent practical experience).

If you would like to be considered for this position, please apply directly or get in touch at lewis.dorling@exploreltd.com.