Principal Java Technologist

We are looking for a Principal Java Technologist to provide technical leadership across multiple teams and initiatives within a large, complex retail organisation. This role goes beyond a single squad: you will act as a technical authority, mentor, and problem-solver, shaping architectural decisions, unblocking delivery challenges, and raising engineering standards across the platform.

You will work closely with engineering leadership, product, and business stakeholders, influencing both technology direction and product outcomes, while remaining hands-on where it matters most. Retail experience is essential, ideally within high-scale, customer-facing or payments-heavy environments.

This is a permanent opportunity and would require you onsite in London Paddington 3 days a week.

What you’ll be doing

Technical Leadership & Thought Leadership

• Lead deep technical discovery sessions and architecture reviews across teams and projects.
• Anticipate technical and operational challenges, proposing pragmatic, scalable solutions.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor to engineering, product, and senior stakeholders.
• Influence product and business decisions through a strong understanding of trade-offs, risk, and value.

Hands-on Software Engineering

• Write and review high-quality Java code (Java 17+) using frameworks such as Spring Boot or Micronaut.
• Design and build resilient backend services supporting high-volume, secure retail and payment transactions.
• Develop and oversee integrations with acquiring banks, PSPs, payment gateways, and fraud platforms.
• Step in where needed to unblock complex technical challenges or critical deliveries.

Architecture & Integration

• Champion event-driven architectures using Kafka and enterprise integration patterns.
• Drive consistent, scalable microservices design across multiple teams.
• Balance long-term architectural direction with short-term delivery needs.

Cloud, DevOps & Operability

• Design, build, and support cloud-native platforms (Azure preferred) using Kubernetes and Terraform.
• Set standards for CI/CD using GitHub Actions, ensuring reliable and repeatable releases.
• Own and promote observability, monitoring, and alerting using tools such as OpenTelemetry and Dynatrace.
• Advocate for operational excellence, resilience, and production readiness.

Security, Compliance & Risk

• Champion secure-by-design principles and best practices across all services.
• Ensure systems align with PCI DSS, PSD2, and SCA requirements.
• Embed data protection and security considerations into architecture and delivery from day one.

Mentoring & Engineering Excellence

• Mentor engineers across all levels, from junior to senior and lead.
• Raise the bar for code quality, testing, and engineering practices.
• Help define and promote standards for code review, testing strategies, delivery, and on-call/operational support.
• Foster a culture of learning, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation

• Continuously improve platform reliability, performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
• Stay ahead of technology trends and identify opportunities to innovate within the retail and payments space.
• Challenge existing approaches constructively and drive positive change.

Requirements

What we are looking for

• Proven experience as a Principal Java Engineer / Technologist in large-scale, backend-heavy environments.
• Experience working across multiple teams, providing leadership beyond a single product or squad.
• Strong Java expertise (Java 17+) with Spring Boot or Micronaut.
• Solid experience with Kafka, event-driven architectures, microservices, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Strong understanding of retail and payment systems, including PSP integrations, fraud, tokenisation, and settlement flows.
• Cloud experience (Azure preferred), including Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Working knowledge of PCI DSS, PSD2, and SCA.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments with a strong DevOps and test-driven mindset.
• Retail experience is mandatory, ideally in high-volume or customer-facing platforms.

Benefits

We offer

• Competitive salary including self-proposed salary increases
• Flexible working arrangements 
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays. After 2 years you are entitled to 1 additional day/ year up to 30 days
• Annual profit distribution 
• Enhanced Maternity, Paternity, Shared Parental and Adoption leave and pay
• Enhanced pension scheme (up to 8% matched)
• Growth opportunities, including access to Udemy 
• Private Medical Healthcare with Aviva
• A dynamic, innovative, and supportive work environment, where your ideas and contributions are valued
• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement within a global company 
• Annual company team-building trip, Anniversary and Christmas party
• The chance to work on cutting-edge projects that are transforming the fintech industry
• Electric Vehicle leasing scheme
• Retail Discounts
• At our offices we have a wide range of snacks and drinks to keep you fed and healthy
• Conference Budget
• Cycle to Work scheme

About Mindera

At Mindera we use technology to build products we are proud of, with people we love.

Software Engineering Applications, including Web and Mobile, are at the core of what we do at Mindera. We partner with our clients, to understand their product and deliver high performance, resilient and scalable software systems that create an impact in their users and businesses across the world.

You get to work with a bunch of great people, where the whole team owns the project together.

Our culture reflects our lean and self-organisation attitude. We encourage our colleagues to take risks, make decisions, work in a collaborative way and talk to everyone to enhance communication.

We are proud of our work and we love to learn all and everything while navigating through an Agile, Lean and collaborative environment.

Check out our Blog: http://mindera.com/ and our Handbook: http://bit.ly/MinderaHandbook

Our offices are located: Porto, Portugal | Aveiro, Portugal | Coimbra, Portugal | Leicester, UK | San Diego, USA | Chennai, India | Bengaluru, India

Mindera is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender including gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or any other protected status. All matters related to employment are decided on the basis of qualifications, merit and business need.