Java Technical Lead

IC Markets Global is one of the most renowned Forex CFD provider, offering trading solutions for active day traders and scalpers as well as traders that are new to the forex market. IC Markets Global offers its clients cutting edge trading platforms, low latency connectivity and superior liquidity.

IC Markets Global is revolutionizing online forex trading. Traders are now able to gain access to pricing previously only available to investment banks and high net worth individuals.

Our management team have significant experience in the Forex, CFD and Equity markets in Asia, Europe and North America. It is this experience that has enabled us to select the best possible technology solutions and hand pick some of the best pricing providers available in the market.

About the Role

We are seeking a Technical Team Lead – Java with strong hands-on backend development experience, proven technical leadership capabilities, and the ability to lead and manage a full engineering team end to end.

The ideal candidate will come from a Fintech, Forex, Trading, or high-performance systems environment, with strong experience in Java, microservices architecture, API development, backend integrations, low-latency systems, and cloud-based delivery.

This is a critical leadership role within the engineering organization. The person will be responsible not only for hands-on technical guidance, but also for ensuring the team is properly structured, aligned, productive, and delivering according to business priorities. The role requires someone who can stay fully on top of team activities, break down work, assign responsibilities, remove blockers, challenge estimates, monitor progress, and ensure delivery commitments are met.

The Technical Team Lead will act as the main point of reference for the team from a technical and delivery perspective, working closely with Product, QA, DevOps, Mobile, Trading, Risk, and other business stakeholders.

The person should be able to lead with minimal supervision, take full ownership of the team’s technical direction, and ensure engineering standards, delivery quality, and operational reliability are consistently maintained.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & Ownership

• Lead, mentor, and guide a team of Java backend developers.
• Take ownership of the team’s day-to-day execution, priorities, delivery progress, and technical output.
• Ensure all team members have clear responsibilities, priorities, and expected deliverables.
• Break down technical work into clear tasks and assign them effectively across the team.
• Monitor team progress closely and proactively identify delays, risks, dependencies, and blockers.
• Act as the first escalation point for the team and help unblock issues quickly.
• Ensure the team is working efficiently, with clear communication and accountability.
• Support onboarding, knowledge sharing, coaching, and continuous development of team members.
• Promote ownership, collaboration, technical discipline, and a delivery-focused mindset within the team.

2. Technical Leadership

• Provide strong technical direction across backend systems, integrations, and trading-related services.
• Lead technical design discussions and ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business needs.
• Conduct code reviews and ensure engineering standards, best practices, and clean coding principles are followed.
• Challenge technical decisions where needed and ensure the team follows the correct architecture and implementation approach.
• Support developers with complex technical issues and ensure the right solutions are implemented.
• Drive technical documentation, implementation plans, and knowledge sharing across the team.
• Ensure technical decisions are clearly communicated to Product, QA, DevOps, and other stakeholders.

3. Backend Architecture & Development

• Design, develop, and maintain backend services using Java, preferably Java 17+.
• Build and enhance microservices, REST APIs, event-driven services, and backend modules for trading workflows.
• Work on trading platform integrations, liquidity management systems, price feeds, risk engines, execution services, and internal backend tools.
• Apply modern architecture practices such as domain-driven design, CQRS, event-driven architecture, and event sourcing where relevant.
• Work with Vaadin framework for internal UI and console development where required.
• Understand and contribute to mixed Java/Kotlin environments where applicable.
• Collaborate with mobile teams and understand API integration requirements for iOS Swift and Android/Kotlin applications.
• Ensure backend services are reliable, scalable, secure, and aligned with platform requirements.

4. System Performance, Stability & Reliability

• Build and maintain low-latency, high-availability backend components.
• Optimize system performance through concurrency tuning, JVM tuning, GC optimization, and efficient service design.
• Support performance testing, load testing, and production-readiness activities.
• Lead or support incident investigation, root cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Ensure production issues are properly analyzed, documented, and followed up with preventive actions.
• Collaborate with DevOps, Cloud, QA, and monitoring teams to improve system reliability.
• Promote a strong engineering culture around stability, observability, and operational excellence.

5. Delivery & Project Ownership

• Drive technical delivery across sprint planning, task breakdown, execution, and release readiness.
• Work closely with Product Owners and Product Managers to understand requirements, clarify scope, and define realistic delivery timelines.
• Challenge unclear requirements, incomplete analysis, or unrealistic timelines where needed.
• Ensure technical dependencies, risks, and blockers are identified early and communicated clearly.
• Track delivery progress and make sure the team is moving according to agreed priorities.
• Ensure releases are delivered with the required quality, documentation, testing support, and technical sign-off.
• Maintain clear communication with Product, QA, DevOps, and management regarding status, risks, and delivery expectations.
• Take ownership of delivery outcomes, not only technical implementation.

6. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Work closely with QA and QA Automation teams to support testing, integration testing, regression testing, and load testing.
• Collaborate with DevOps and Cloud teams on deployments, CI/CD pipelines, environments, monitoring, and infrastructure needs.
• Coordinate with Mobile teams to ensure backend APIs and services meet mobile application requirements.
• Work with Trading, Risk, Dealing, Compliance, and Operations teams where business or system knowledge is required.
• Ensure technical communication between teams is clear, structured, and action-oriented.

7. Engineering Standards & Process Improvement

• Enforce coding standards, code review practices, documentation, and technical governance.
• Improve development processes, estimation accuracy, release readiness, and operational efficiency.
• Identify recurring issues within the team and propose practical improvements.
• Support the adoption of automation, AI tools, and engineering productivity improvements.
• Encourage the team to use modern tools and practices to increase speed, quality, and maintainability.
• Ensure the team follows agreed engineering, security, and release processes.

Required Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience, with strong hands-on Java development.
• Strong experience with Java 17+ and modern backend development practices.
• Proven experience (2+ years) of leading a technical team (7+ members) as a team or technical lead.
• Experience managing team delivery, task breakdown, estimation, technical planning, and execution.
• Strong understanding of microservices architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience designing and developing REST APIs and backend integrations.
• Experience with event-driven systems, messaging, and asynchronous processing.
• Strong understanding of system performance, scalability, reliability, and production support.
• Experience with cloud environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience working with DevOps teams on CI/CD, deployments, and environment management.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to lead with ownership, accountability, and minimal supervision.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to make decisions under pressure.

Preferred Skills

• Experience in Forex, CFD, Fintech, Trading, Banking, or financial systems.
• Experience with trading platform integrations, liquidity providers, price feeds, execution systems, or risk engines.
• Knowledge of FIX Protocol and FIX Market Data.
• Experience with price feed aggregation engines.
• Experience with Vaadin framework.
• Knowledge of Kotlin and mixed Java/Kotlin environments.
• Understanding of mobile trading app architecture and backend API requirements for Swift/Kotlin applications.
• Experience with monitoring tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, or similar.
• Exposure to financial regulations such as FSA, DFSA, CySEC, FCA, ASIC, or similar.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, or cloud-native architecture.
• Experience using AI tools to improve development productivity, code quality, documentation, and delivery efficiency.

Personal Attributes

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Proactive and hands-on leadership style.
• Able to stay on top of multiple priorities and ensure nothing is left unmanaged.
• Strong technical judgment and ability to challenge decisions constructively.
• Delivery-focused and able to drive teams toward clear outcomes.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment.
• Strong communicator with the ability to align technical teams and business stakeholders.
• Able to mentor, coach, and raise the performance level of the team.
• Practical, structured, and solution-oriented.