Lead Software Engineer

Every minute of every day, Smiths Detection’s threat detection and security screening technology helps to protect people and infrastructure, making the world a safer place.

Smiths Detection is a global leader in the development, manufacture and management of security and detection solutions designed to make the world a safer place. Our technology provides threat detection and screening solutions for customers in our key markets: aviation, ports and borders, defence, and urban security.

Our expertise spans 21 global offices, seven manufacturing sites and five R&D centres, with a global network of 3,000 dedicated colleagues contributing towards over 40 years at the frontline of advances in safety and security.

This results in careers built on variety and the opportunity to work on a range of state-of-the-art solutions, where you can develop your knowledge and experience every day.

Job Purpose:

Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance across teams, solving complex problems with innovative solutions. Ensure adoption of Agile and DevOps practices while embedding security, scalability, and performance. Hands-on proficiency in Angular (10+), Java, Spring Boot, and modern front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, UI frameworks) ensures delivery of robust, scalable applications. Mentor engineers, foster collaboration, and deliver high-quality systems aligned with business goals.

As per company policy, this role requires presence in the office 4 days per week.

Duties:

• Provides technical leadership and guidance to multiple development teams within the Platform & Application development organization.
• Works on unusually complex technical problems and provides solutions which are highly innovative and ingenious
• Propose architectural design in alignment with business requirements and able to justify technically the design considerations between the different available technologies.
• Assess, review, test and implement various architecture and design patterns and work with the delivery teams to ensure alignment to the architecture.
• Have oversight into architecture, working with your technical leads to ensure the systems and solutions you develop are flexible, loosely coupled and deliver performance that is appropriate for business needs.
• Ensure an efficient software methodology is in place, aligned to agile / lean principles, learning, and iterating frequently, highly collaborative, and regularly improved.
• Pick up a software component and contribute to hands-on development.
• Aligning to the DevOps principles and tool sets being established with high degrees of automation throughout the development process. Continuous integration, continuous deployment and continuous operational monitoring are baseline goals.
• Ensure that security, reliability scalability and performance are embedded into the team skills, development process and architecture.
• Engage across the organization with business partners to gain buy-in on prioritization, with agreement on the key performance metrics which will be impacted.
• Measure and monitor the solutions you develop, regularly reviewing operational metrics to validate the effectiveness of your product in meeting customer needs.
• Excellent knowledge of modern platforms and tools, using the correct product where appropriate, especially open source and open standards
• Communicate through email, presentations, informal meetings right across the organization (including senior management and executive team) to share learning, insights and plans, gathering feedback and influencing in the process.
• Role model self-driven skill development within the team, promoting learning events and facilitating individual needs.

Qualifications:

Education/Training:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or related field.
• Proven experience (8+ years) in software development.

Technical Expertise:

• Must be proficient in front end technologies like Angular(10+), Java, Spring Boot
• Must have knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, and modern UI frameworks/libraries
• Must have expertise in API design, gRPC, RESTful services, and development of scalable web-based applications.
• Experience with web components, micro front end architecture, responsive UI development.
• Practical experience in Python and/or Golang development, microservices-based application design, domain-driven design (DDD), and distributed systems principles.
• Must have working experience on PostgreSQL (or similar SQL databases) and Redis
• Must have experience with automated unit and integration testing frameworks (e.g., Jasmine, Jest, Karma, JUnit, PyTest, Go testing, Testify etc.).
• Working experience on UX is added advantage.
• Should have strong experience with source control systems such as Git or equivalent modern branching strategies.
• Sound expertise in Linux with networking. Scripting, Debugging & Troubleshooting
• Good understanding of application security, OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, OWASP guidelines, and secure coding practices.
• Proficiency in containerization and orchestration technologies including Docker and Kubernetes.
• Should have working experience on build and release pipelines using CI/CD.
• Strong understanding of public cloud platforms and service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with Agile methodologies, and JIRA
• Understanding of software quality assurance principles
• Knowledge of modern data architectures including event-driven architectures, stream processing, real-time analytics, data democratization, and platform approaches that support AI/ML at scale.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Participate in architecture and design discussions across teams.
• Mentor engineers and drive engineering excellence through reviews and best practices.
• Participate in estimation, and delivery governance.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.

Skills and Experience:

• A self-starter with the ability to manage your time effectively, keen attention to detail and use your own initiative
• Effective communication skills at all levels of the organization and collaborative abilities.
• Excellent communication skills particularly in English (fluently spoken and written) in addition to any local language spoken at the place of work.
• The ability and motivation to persistently pursue and achieve / drive effective results which drive the business forward.
• Collaboration and Influencing with a Global mindset, cultural awareness.
• Proven matrix and stakeholder management skills/experience working virtually in diverse teams.
• The ability to make effective, timely decisions in a complex, global market by sourcing and analysing critical information.
• The understanding and recognition of the organisation’s commercial environment and positioning themselves, their role and their actions in order to support the organisation’s commercial success.
• The ability to engage, challenge and work effectively with others.
• The ability to build an effective network of relationships both internally and externally, understanding their customers’ needs.
• Willing and able to identify and support change and continuous improvement in own and wider business environment.
• Ability to interact with cross functional teams in a matrix environment.
• Ability to work in an international and multi-cultural environment

Professional competencies

• Ability to be resourceful as well as strong at probing and translating information into insight
• Substantial experience of creating multi-platform propositions within a creative environment which supports the market and industry teams
• Experience of collaborating in a cross functional and cross-cultural organisation, with the ability to support the bridge between the markets (sales) teams and the industry (vertical) teams.

Join us and we’ll help build your career, with excellent training and opportunities for career growth across the business, both locally and globally. You’ll experience an inclusive environment, with strong leadership and a focus on safety and wellbeing. You’ll also have the flexibility to choose from a wide range of benefits to suit your lifestyle, offering you and your family support from a health and wellbeing, financial and lifestyle perspective.

Join us and work for a world-leader, with the benefits and training to reward your dedication and skills. Be part of a team where we are making the world a safer place.

We believe that different perspectives and backgrounds are what make a company flourish. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment regardless of color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, economic status, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristics. We are proud to be an inclusive company with values grounded in equality and ethics, where we celebrate, support, and embrace diversity.

At no time during the hiring process will Smiths Detection, nor any of our recruitment partners ever request payment to enable participation - including, but not limited to, interviews or testing. Avoid fraudulent requests by applying jobs directly through our career’s website.