Lead Software Engineer With AI ProficiencyWe are seeking a highly skilled and hands-on Lead Software Engineer with AI proficiency to help build the next generation FTSE Russell Index Platform. This platform underpins the calculation and distribution of FTSE Russell's global family of indexes and requires advanced engineering, high precision data processing, and deep collaboration across global teams.This is a deeply technical role focused on designing, building, integrating, and operationalising modern software and AI driven capabilities across internal platforms and client facing products. You will work with innovative technologies, contribute to complex algorithmic design, and drive engineering excellence in a high performance, data intensive environment.What You Will Be Doing:Design, develop, and maintain complex Java and Python applications using modern engineering practices.
Build / embed AI powered features into critical systems.Architect and enhance services that support largescale, performance critical index computations.Collaborate with Product Managers, UX, and engineering teams globally to deliver high quality products.Lead projects end-to-end through requirements, design, development, testing, deployment, and operations.Build and maintain automated test suites to ensure performance, scalability, and security.Diagnose production issues, identify root causes, and deliver Level 3 support and fixes.Conduct peer reviews, provide technical leadership, and mentor junior engineers.What You Will Bring:Degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science or Electronics / Electrical Engineering.12+ years of hands-on backend software engineering experience.What We're Looking For:A proactive, creative engineering leader who enjoys solving complex problems, working hands-on with modern technologies, and driving AI enabled innovation. If you're passionate about building resilient, intelligent, data intensive systems that power global financial markets, we'd love to hear from you.Required Skills:Support the organisation's AI adoption journey. Develop and enhance intelligent solutions using LLMs, LangChain/LangGraph, and agentic AI frameworks.Establish engineering guidelines for safe, scalable, traceable and production ready AI deployments across internal platforms and external product suites.Strong algorithms, data structures, problem solving skills, and ability to translate business problems into scalable solutions.Good command of coding standards and Strong understanding of both high level and low level software design.Expertise In:Core Java, PythonBuilding highly distributed, data intensive systemsMicroservices, REST APIsRDBMS (Oracle/SQL Server/Postgres)CI/CD tools (Jenkins/GitLab), DevOps automationDocker, KubernetesJVM profiling & performance optimisationPrior exposure to Level 3 production support.Preferred SkillsExperience leading or mentoring a team of engineers.Experience within financial services or with financial market data.Familiarity with in-memory caching, Spring Boot, Redis, Kafka.Experience with BDD frameworks such as Cucumber, JBehave, or Karate.Background as a Scrum Master or experience running Agile teams.