Senior Java Engineer

UnderwriteMe is a UK based Insurtech creating disruptive SaaS solutions for the insurance industry. We are on a mission to make life insurance more widely accessible, providing technology to ensure people and their loved ones are protected when the inevitable happens.

We are wholly owned by Pacific Life, but operate as an autonomous business within the company. This gives us the best of both worlds - the freedom to act like a technology scale-up, with the stability of a large company meaning longer-term thinking and no last minute pivots to gain our next funding round. Pacific Life Re became 100% shareholder of UnderwriteMe in 2017 given the strategic synergy with its reinsurance business.

UnderwriteMe has two main products we sell to customers:

Decision Platform - a B2B enterprise platform that provides a best-in-market Underwriting Rules Engine used by over 30 insurers to power their underwriting decisions. The product is sold across UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific and North America. The platform combines our engine with technology to source and process third-party information supporting underwriting decisions for insurers. We are already working on capabilities, powered by AI, to make these decisions even more efficient.

Protection Platform - a B2B2C marketplace used by over 15,000 advisors to power quoting and purchase of protection products in the UK. We currently deliver 16% of the UK markets protection policies and we are already working to increase our reach.

UnderwriteMe is part-way through a multi-year transformation to adopt a Product Operating Model, modernising our architecture and moving our products to a SaaS model. We still have much to do, and we're looking for people to join us on this challenging and exciting journey.

Pacific Life and UnderwriteMe are both organisations focussed on creating a great environment in which to work. We recognise that attracting and retaining top talent is how we continue to improve the company. We pay well and as we are part of a mature organisation, we have a good benefits package. We value and celebrate diversity in our teams and continually work to celebrate the uniqueness of each person. We work in a hybrid model and we expect our leaders to flex where they work based on the needs of the company and their teams.

The Role
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join us to help us build, enhance and scale our Protection Platform product.

The Protection Platform lives within a modern tech ecosystem:

Hosted entirely in the cloud (AWS) utilising products such as EKS, RDS, DynamoDB, EventBridge and S3.

All our applications are JVM based with the majority running on Java 21. We're in the process of moving our backend services to Spring Boot.

We've invested heavily in our DataDog integration to bring world class observability and monitoring to our systems.

We've recently moved to Gitlab and are currently building out our next generation of automated deployment pipelines.

We've incorporated some of the best open-source software into our systems and processes including Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, Flux, Docker and Renovate.

Integrated with some of the leading products in the industry including Auth0, Segment, Customer IO, Snowflake, Vercel and more.

We strive for the best developer experience possible:

High spec Macbook Pros standard issue. Most desks in office have 2 X Apple Studio displays!

On demand provisioning of environments for you to test and validate your changes. These can be securely integrated with your local environment for rapid feedback.

All infrastructure changes managed as Infrastructure-as-Code using a Git Ops based approach.

A sandbox available for rapid prototyping with AWS technologies.

You'll join a team actively practicing:

Collaborative approaches to engineering including pair and ensemble programming.

A shift left mindset on quality and security.

Build/Run philosophy: we own our code in production-we write it, test it, deploy it, and monitor it.

What you will be doing
Contributing to the development and improvement of the Protection Platform with a focus on adaptability, scalability, and maintainability.

Taking ownership of complex engineering problems, delivering high-quality solutions, and supporting the team in building robust, production-ready software.

Actively participating in system design and architecture discussions to produce simple and useful solutions.

Helping shape and improve the team's ways of working drawing on your knowledge and experience in areas like Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Continuous Delivery and XP.

Working closely with product managers to understand priorities, influence the roadmap, and ensure a healthy balance between delivering new features and improving technical foundations.

Championing a DevOps mindset-owning all aspects of your code from development through to production including the AWS solution design, security, observability.

Supporting the growth of others through code reviews, pairing, and knowledge sharing-helping to foster a culture of learning and ownership.

What type of person fits the role
You're a well-rounded software engineer who sees writing code as just one part of building great software. You care about solving real problems, not just shipping features, and you think critically about the trade-offs behind technical decisions.

You're someone who questions unnecessary complexity and believes in simple, maintainable solutions. You understand that the best code is often the code you don't have to write.

You enjoy working collaboratively across disciplines-engaging with product managers, designers, and other engineers to build systems that are technically sound and deliver real value.

You prefer your day mostly being filled with collaboration with other engineers through pairing or ensemble programming. Working alone with your headphones is the exception not the norm.

You're comfortable balancing long-term technical quality with short-term delivery needs, and you know when to push for robustness and when to favour speed.

You take pride in your craft, but you're not precious about your code. You see feedback and iteration as essential to delivering high-quality software.

You're curious, proactive, and constantly looking for ways to improve your own skills, your team's effectiveness, and the systems you work on.

Technical Requirements

Deep understanding of techniques like Trunk Based Development, Test Driven Development, Continuous Delivery, Domain Driven Design. You have worked in a team that has successfully applied these techniques to real world problems.

Strong proficiency in modern Java (21) and Spring Boot.

Previous experience building cloud native solutions (preferably AWS).

Strong grounding in core computer science principles.

Extra bonus if you've worked in and have experience of legacy migration techniques, event driven architectures, CQRS, event sourcing or modular monoliths.

If you feel that you've met most of the requirements above, even if it isn't everything, please do reach out and apply.

About UnderwriteMe

UnderwriteMe is an Insurtech software business and subsidiary of Pacific Life Re (PL Re), a global life and pensions reinsurance firm. We have a vision to help everyone purchase protection insurance by using data and disruptive technology to transform our partners and markets in order to make their underwriting processes as quick and efficient as possible.

Our core products are:
• a best-in-market Underwriting Rules Engine which can be used to automate any structured data within the underwriting journey, and which is sold in the UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific and North America
• the Protection Platform, an end-to-end quote and buy marketplace for Protection in the UK

Working for UnderwriteMe

Joining UnderwriteMe means being part of a technology company that is committed to bringing a fresh and dynamic approach to insurance. You'd be working with a team of highly technical experts made up of people with backgrounds in software, fintech, and insurance. Every person in our global team is valued for the unique qualities they bring to our business and we seek to build their expertise and support their individual ambitions at every step.

Of course, we take our work seriously and we know our team can operate under great pressure. We work hard and thrive on achievement, but we also know how to have fun and relax too. We regularly host a range of team building days to strengthen our team's connection with each other and reflect on their successes.

Providing employees with a healthy work-life balance is very important to our culture. We have a wide range of employee benefits and we host regular social activities and wellbeing initiatives. We are also committed to supporting our employee's involvement in their communities, by actively fundraising, hosting charity events, and overseeing volunteering opportunities.

Benefits (Only for Permanent and Fixed Term Employees)

As part of our commitment to accessibility for all, UnderwriteMe will, upon the request of the applicant, provide accommodation during the recruitment process to ensure equal access to applicants with disabilities. Please contact us about your needs, and we will consult with you to ensure suitable accommodation is provided.
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