Tech Lead

Tech Lead / Principal Engineer – Contract

Location: London Canary Wharf – 4 days onsite (no flex)

Start Date: 2nd November 2026

Duration: Initial contract until 24th December, with potential extension

Outside IR35

• rate depending on experience

We're looking for an experienced Tech Lead / Principal Engineer to support a major financial services engagement with one of our consultancy partners.

This is a senior, client-facing technical role, focused on solution architecture, systems integration and technical leadership across complex mobile and backend platforms.

You'll be joining a fast-paced project, working closely with engineering teams and senior stakeholders to understand existing technology landscapes, identify architectural gaps and shape scalable, secure technical solutions.

The Role

• Lead solution architecture and technical design across mobile applications, backend services and integrations.
• Assess existing systems, map technical dependencies and identify architectural gaps.
• Define technical solutions and architectural blueprints, including greenfield components.
• Work closely with client engineering teams to connect systems and improve workflows.
• Provide technical leadership, guiding engineering decisions and ensuring best practices.
• Collaborate with product, design and delivery teams to ensure solutions meet business and technical requirements.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor, confidently engaging with senior technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Balance immediate delivery requirements with longer-term scalability, security and maintainability.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years' software engineering experience, with a background operating as a Tech Lead, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer or Solution Architect.
• Strong financial services experience, ideally across banking, payments or fintech.
• Proven mobile product experience, alongside strong backend architecture and systems integration expertise.
• Experience designing end-to-end solutions across APIs, microservices, cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.
• Strong backend technical background, ideally TypeScript/JavaScript, Java or .NET.
• Experience with AWS
• Strong understanding of architecture design patterns, API integrations, event-driven architecture and engineering best practices.
• Experience assessing existing technology environments, identifying gaps and recommending pragmatic technical solutions.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to lead technical discussions and influence architectural decisions.