Staff Full Stack Engineer

About Allica Bank Allica is the UK’s fastest growing company - and the fastest-growing financial technology (Fintech) firm ever. Our purpose is to help established SMEs, one of the last major underserved opportunities in Fintech. Established SMEs are the backbone of local communities - representing over a third of our economy - yet have been largely neglected both by traditional high street banks and modern fintech providers. Department Description Technology sits at the centre of Allica. We design and build the platforms that power the bank, working closely with every part of the business to deliver real impact for customers. Our teams move quickly, focus on outcomes, and take ownership from concept through to delivery. We solve complex problems, modernise processes, and enable the business to scale with confidence. What makes us different is the level of influence and autonomy engineers have. We work without the weight of legacy systems, which means we can focus on building for the future. Everyone contributes ideas and helps shape how we operate, and roles evolve as the organisation grows. This is a place for people who want to have a tangible impact and do their best work in a modern, collaborative environment. Role Description The Staff Full Stack Engineer is responsible for setting technical direction across multiple squads, typically overseeing 2–3 squads and line-managing 3–5 Full Stack Engineers. The role exists to shape architecture, ensure the success of these squads, and drive consistent, secure, and compliant delivery across Allica’s digital products. You will use your expertise in Spring Boot microservices (Java/Kotlin) and modern web technologies (React/TypeScript) to define and evolve cross-squad patterns, shared tooling, and platform capabilities. Our backend microservices are containerised and deployed to Azure Container Apps, and our web applications are deployed to Azure Static Web Apps; you will help define and uphold the standards that make these platforms robust, cost-effective, and easy to operate. You will own key cross-cutting concerns such as authentication, observability, performance, accessibility, and regulatory compliance, ensuring our systems meet the standards expected of a UK bank. You are hands-on: you design and review architectures, pair with engineers, and contribute code to high-impact initiatives. You work closely with Product, Design and other engineering leaders to align technical direction with business goals and to unblock delivery. You drive the responsible adoption of GenAI and agentic engineering practices (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot), setting organisation-wide standards and measuring impact. Success in this role is reflected in simpler architectures, improved delivery consistency and reliability, stronger engineering effectiveness, and the growth and performance of your direct reports and squads. Principal Accountabilities Set and evolve cross-squad technical patterns and guardrails for: Backend services (Kotlin/Java Spring Boot microservices, REST/OpenAPI, messaging, integrations). Frontend architectures (React/TypeScript, shared design system, Nx, micro frontends where appropriate). Authentication/authorisation, API gateways and API governance (versioning, contracts, deprecation). Own platform-level technical initiatives that reduce complexity and duplication, including shared libraries, design system tokens, infrastructure templates, observability frameworks, and code/scaffolding templates. Define and maintain organisation-wide standards for performance, reliability, security, accessibility, and operational excellence, in partnership with Architecture, InfoSec, Risk, and Compliance. Establish and improve SLOs, error budget policies, and incident management practices across key services; lead post-incident reviews and drive follow-through on structural fixes. Lead cross-squad system design for complex initiatives, ensuring coheren