Staff Engineer

The Staff Engineer supports the technical leadership within the Value Stream and Capabilities. They assist in managing technical and functional aspects of the Value Stream’s domain, working closely with the leadership team to drive new initiatives, address live issues, and explore future technical options. The Staff Engineer collaborates with the Value Stream’s Principal Engineer, Delivery Lead, Lead Product Owner, and Solution/Enterprise Architects to aid developing the Value Streams roadmap, ensuring alignment with target architecture and engineering strategies. They contribute to implementing best practices, standards, and technical improvements as agreed upon by Engineering. The Staff Engineer is enthusiastic about adopting new industry best practices and methodologies, actively participating in both internal and external communities.

Accountabilities

• Assist in the detailed design, engineering, and quality of the technical delivery of the Value Stream.
• Support the creation of technical designs, solutions, and capabilities that align with the business strategy.
• Promote values such as productivity, quality, transparency, and openness.
• Facilitate open and effective communication channels to enhance knowledge transfer across the Value Stream.
• Ensure technical solutions follow architectural governance processes and align with technology roadmaps and engineering strategy.
• Drive continuous improvements to the Value Stream’s processes, resulting in increased efficiency and stability.
• Oversee technical debt processes and ensure solutions do not result in uncontrolled technical debt.
• Oversee the dependancies and vulnerabilities processes and ensure we reduce the overall vulnerabilities without adding to them, through coaching and mentoring and best in class designs and solutions.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and mentoring to the engineering community within the area of their expertise.
• Collaborate and lead to help the creation of the Value Streams epics/stories in conjunction with the technical solution, collaborating across teams to ensure timely and quality delivery.
• Provide estimates for user stories, considering technical complexities and dependencies.
• Drive technical leadership and guidance to engineers in the Value Streams, resolving technical constraints and roadblocks.
• Support the Principal Engineer with technical risks/issues and help plan mitigation actions at the Value Stream level.
• Manage remediation activities for service issues at the Value Stream level.
• Support Senior Leadership with the technology strategy of Admiral UK and actively contributes to the strategic agenda.
• Own technical dependencies and provide input to Quarterly Value Stream Alignment, Monthly Value Stream Planning, and Sprint Planning.
• Identify and implement continuous improvements to engineering processes, resulting in increased efficiency and greater ROI.
• Manage specific epics addressing technical debts, ensuring solutions do not result in uncontrolled technical debt by reducing the dept and reporting on it.
• Take ownership in resolving technical impediments for the Value Stream.

Key Interactions

• Supporting the Principal Engineer in Value Stream activities.
• Coach engineers and technical people in the Value Streams.
• Collaborate and consult with Architecture, specifically the assigned architecture leads.
• Collaborate and consult with technical governance functions (e.g., InfoSec, Data Governance).
• Collaborate and consult with Heads of Capabilities for engineering excellence.

Knowledge and Experience Required

• Strong hands‑on experience with Java and Spring Boot, with recent commercial use in the last few years.
• Knowledge and experience with Guidewire PC/BC and integrations.
• Knowledge and experience with Guidewire Customer Engage and Mobile App (desirable).
• Experience in design and development with programming languages such as Angular, React, Gosu, and Java/J2EE.
• Familiarity with code repository tools (e.g., GitHub, GitLab) and code deployment tools (e.g., Jenkins, Nexus, Team City).
• Experience with performance and monitoring tools (e.g., AppDynamics, ELK).
• Knowledge of automated testing frameworks (e.g., Cucumber, Protractor).
• Experience with application server solutions (e.g., JBOSS, Apache Tomcat).
• Familiarity with cloud applications and services (e.g., Azure, GCP, AWS).
• Knowledge of microservices and containerization tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with coaching and mentoring techniques.
• Experience operating within heavily regulated environments.
• Knowledge of development and release toolsets.
• Understanding of IT architectural governance, standards, and methodology.
• Knowledge of CISO governance frameworks, standards, controls, and auditing documentation.
• Familiarity with general insurance technologies (e.g., Guidewire core and digital products).
• Experience with tools such as Jira and Confluence.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, communicating technical decisions clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Proven ability to lead, influence and mentor engineers across multiple squads, acting as a senior technical authority.
• Experience owning and improving service reliability, technical debt, and vulnerability remediation, feeding insights into Engineering Leads / Heads of IT.

Professional Training Requirements

• Guidewire 10 certifications.

Salary, Benefits, and Work-Life Balance

At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so we accommodate flexible hours wherever possible. Overall package is negotiable dependant on your experience. Due to the sheer variety of opportunities within Admiral, we understand that it can sometimes be confusing as to what “level” of role is being advertised compared to your current job. If you would like to talk to us about either flexible working or overall compensation, please click here to submit your query.

Disability Confident Leader

As a Disability Confident Leader, for candidates with a disability or long-term health condition, that opt into the Disability Confident scheme, we’ll invite a fair and proportionate number of applicants that meet the essential requirements of the role to the first stage of our selection process.

If you need any adjustments or support with your application or during the recruitment process, just let us know. Please do email us or contact us on 07386666328. This number is dedicated to supporting candidates that require reasonable adjustments or support during the application process.

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