Staff Software Engineer – Product-Agnostic Platform | Contract to Hire | Remote | No Sponsorship offered
We’re partnering with a leading insurance organization on their search for a Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical direction of a product-agnostic platform, one that can support multiple products without a new platform being built each time.
This is a high-impact, individual contributor role with real technical leadership. You’ll operate beyond the boundaries of a single team, setting architectural direction on an in-flight initiative to move from hard-coded, product-specific builds to a configurable, reusable platform. You’ll stay hands-on, work closely with Product, Engineering Management and senior stakeholders, and help teams make sound, sustainable technical decisions.
Essential requirements (all are must-haves):
- Staff-level leadership: a proven track record operating at Staff Engineer level (or equivalent), driving complex initiatives across team boundaries. This role is not a step-up from Senior.
- Production ownership: genuine experience owning and supporting systems that are deployed and running, not just building them.
- Experience: 10+ years designing, building and operating production software systems.
- Tech stack: hands-on experience with TypeScript, Python and C++ on AWS.
- Communication: exceptional communication skills with strong executive presence, and comfort presenting technical ideas to senior, non-technical audiences.
Standout experience:
- Experience building multi-product or configurable platforms would be highly relevant.
- Strong architecture experience across distributed systems, scalability, reliability and security.
- Observability and monitoring experience, including metrics, logs, tracing, alerting and incident response.
- Exposure to AI tooling and responsible AI practices.
What we’re looking for:
- A Staff Engineer who leads through judgement and collaboration rather than authority.
- Someone who can translate business problems into technical strategy and explain trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
- A pragmatic, practical approach to AI, focused on real business value rather than hype.
- A genuine interest in developing other engineers and strengthening technical capability across teams.
- Comfort working with ambiguity, breaking big problems into actionable plans with clear ownership.
- No insurance background required. We’re keen to hear from candidates outside the industry who bring a fresh perspective.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading technical direction and architecture for the platform, and aligning teams around shared principles.
- Driving complex, cross-team initiatives by breaking down ambiguous problems and coordinating dependencies.
- Shaping the move from hard-coded, product-specific builds to a configurable, reusable platform.
- Raising engineering standards across testing, observability, CI/CD and operational readiness.
- Leading discovery and proofs of concept, including AI use cases, and taking validated ideas into production responsibly.
- Mentoring Senior Engineers and strengthening technical capability across teams.
- Representing engineering in roadmap and prioritisation discussions with Product, Engineering Management and senior stakeholders.
- Staying hands-on by contributing code, prototypes and designs, and reviewing critical changes where it adds leverage.
Why this role is different:
You’ll be shaping a platform that determines how quickly an entire business can launch new products. This is a Staff-level role with genuine influence over architecture, engineering standards and roadmap, and with real exposure to senior leadership. You’ll also have scope to lead AI exploration and take the right ideas into production.
If you’re interested in learning more, apply today or get in touch for a confidential conversation.
