Fulcrum Digital is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to anchor the technical direction of a full-stack product team building cloud-native applications on Google Cloud Platform. This is a hands-on leadership role: you will architect and build across the stack in Java/Python and React, set engineering standards, and mentor a squad of engineers while staying close to the code. You will work alongside product, design and client stakeholders to translate business goals into resilient, scalable solutions — and act as a strategic technical partner rather than an order-taker. This role suits an engineer who enjoys owning outcomes end to end, from architecture through to production reliability. Key Responsibilities Technical leadership & architecture • Solution design — Own the end-to-end architecture of cloud-native applications on GCP, balancing performance, cost, security and maintainability. • Standards — Design, develop, and optimize queries and analytics using BigQuery for reporting and data insights. Manage deployments, monitoring, and troubleshooting in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). • Decisions — Make and document key technical decisions, weighing trade-offs transparently for stakeholders. Ensure application uptime, performance, and reliability, including support for production incidents. Act as the single point of accountability for the application, liaising with stakeholders, business users, and other technical teams Hands-on delivery • Full-stack build — Design and build backend services and APIs in Java (Spring Boot)/Python, and modern, responsive front-ends in React. • Cloud delivery — Deploy, monitor and optimise workloads on GCP using managed services, containers and CI/CD pipelines. Work with GCP services such as Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, API Gateway, BigQuery, or equivalent services based on project requirements. • Quality — Contribute production-quality code, conduct code reviews, and uphold test coverage and quality gates. People & collaboration • Mentorship — Mentor and grow a squad of mid and junior engineers; provide technical coaching and career guidance. • Stakeholders — Partner with product owners, designers and client stakeholders to shape scope and sequence delivery. • Delivery — Support estimation, sprint planning and risk management as part of an agile delivery team. Requirements Required Skills & Experience We expect a strong, hands-on engineer with a proven track record of leading full-stack teams in a cloud-first environment. Area What we're looking for Experience 8+ years in software engineering, including 2+ years in a technical lead or senior lead capacity. Java / Python (Backend) Deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot/Python; RESTful API design, microservices, and strong understanding of concurrency, JVM performance and testing.Web Components React (Frontend) Strong hands-on experience with React.js. Good knowledge of JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML5, and CSS3. Experience with React hooks, state management, reusable components, and API integration. Understanding of responsive web design. Experience with frontend-testing frameworks is preferred. Google Cloud (GCP) Practical experience with GCP services such as GKE, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL / Firestore, and IAM. App Engine (application deployment, scaling, monitoring) Cloud Datastore / Firestore (data modeling, indexing, query optimization) BigQuery (ETL, complex queries, performance tuning) DevOps & CI/CD Containerisation (Docker), Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines; infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) is a strong plus. Architecture Demonstrated ability to design scalable, secure, distributed systems and to reason about trade-offs. Ways of working Agile / Scrum delivery, Git-based workflows, and a test-first, quality-driven mindset. Leadership Evidence of mentoring engineers, leading design discussions, and communicating clearly with technical and non-technical audiences. Nice to Have • GCP Professional certification (Cloud Architect or Cloud Developer). • Experience with event-driven or serverless architectures at scale. • Exposure to observability tooling (Cloud Monitoring, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry). • Familiarity with domain-driven design and API-first / contract-first development. • Prior experience in a consulting or client-facing delivery environment. Qualifications • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience. Experience with GCP IAM, Cloud Functions, Cloud Storage, or Pub/Sub. Familiarity with DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines on GCP. Background in application ownership/transition, including knowledge transfer from existing teams