Senior AWS Application Lead

About Us:

ClearRoute is an engineering consultancy bridging Quality Engineering, Cloud Platforms and Developer Experience. We help enterprises reliably bring high-impact digital products to market faster, cheaper, and safer, working with technology leaders facing complex business challenges.

We take as much pride in our people, culture and work-life balance as we do in making better software. We’re not just making better software. We’re making the making of software better. Collaborative, entrepreneurial and dedicated to problem solving, we bring the step change our customer need to sustain innovation. Our values challenge us to do the best we can for ClearRoute, our customers and most importantly our team. This is an opportunity for you to build the organisation from the ground up, use your voice to drive change and help transform organisations and problem domains.

Role Description

This is a hands-on application engineering role focused on cloud-native application development. The Client already has strong cloud engineering coverage. Candidates should bring substantial application development experience; those whose primary expertise is infrastructure, CI/CD tooling or cloud operations are unlikely to be the right fit.
The successful candidate will be a senior application developer who builds production software using AWS serverless services and demonstrates strong software engineering practice, including design patterns, functional programming, testing strategy and sound judgement about code structure. They will work directly within the engineering teams, building alongside client developers, migrating application workloads onto the Superhighway platform and establishing engineering patterns that other teams can adopt.
This is a forward-deployed engineer (FDE) role, with hands-on delivery at its core. Pairing, coaching and internal consulting will also help drive adoption. Credibility with experienced application developers will come from practical delivery and technical judgement. Opportunities to engage with client engineers are limited, making preparation and strong first impressions particularly important.

Key Responsibilities:
- Build and ship production application code using AWS serverless services, including Lambda, Step Functions and DynamoDB, in complex enterprise environments.
- Migrate existing application workloads onto the Superhighway platform, working hands-on alongside the teams that own them.
- Establish reference implementations and engineering patterns for AWS application development that other teams can adopt.
- Apply agentic development tools to real delivery work, defining clear acceptance criteria, evaluating generated output and correcting course where needed.
- Pair with and coach client application developers, including those sceptical of AI-assisted development.
- Design and implement practical guardrails and controls within application code and local development workflows.
- Help define the route onto the platform, supporting team adoption and application migration.
- Conduct research and proof-of-concept work, and coordinate technical decisions across application engineering, platform, security and related enterprise teams.
Required Experience:
Essential skills and experience:
- Senior hands-on application development experience, shipping production code in complex enterprise environments.
- Demonstrable software engineering practice, including design patterns, functional programming, testing strategy, and sound judgement about code structure and refactoring. These capabilities should be assessed directly at interview.
- Production-standard Python skills and experience building applications using AWS serverless services, including Step Functions.
- Substantial practical experience with AI-assisted development: directing agentic tools on complex work, defining and testing against clear acceptance criteria, and recognising when generated output is incorrect.
- Strong technical understanding of the AWS ecosystem and its developer tooling from an application developer’s perspective.
- Ability to work through ambiguity and turn research or experimentation into practical implementation. - Ability to act as an internal consultant, working autonomously, leading technical discussions and addressing resistance or misalignment to drive platform adoption.
- Strong communication skills across technical disciplines and stakeholder groups.
Desirable Experience:

- Prior experience in a forward-deployed, embedded or consulting engineering role.
- Familiarity with secure development environments, enterprise guardrails or policy enforcement.
- Experience with containerised development environments or remote development models.
- Exposure to telemetry, usage analytics or engineering reporting pipelines.
- Experience in regulated enterprise environments or those with extensive control requirements.
- Data engineering or analytics skills, particularly where reporting and insight generation form part of the role.
Working at ClearRoute
We have grown from six founders to 180+ people across five countries in three years, and what sets us apart isn't the pace, it's how we grow.

• Real flexibility, in practice. We trust you to perform at your best and still have a life outside of work, with genuine hybrid working, a home office budget, an open feedback culture where your voice shapes decisions, and time off when life needs it (birthday included).

• When ClearRoute wins, you win. We offer profit share so success is shared, meaningful recognition for great work, and benefits that look after you and your family, including private healthcare, competitive salary benchmarking, and a confidential employee assistance program covering counselling, mental health support, and financial wellbeing.

• A community you'll genuinely want to be part of. Interest based communities like running and book clubs, Women in Tech group, monthly socials, and cross regional events bring people together across the company. An inclusive, collaborative culture where you don't need to conform to succeed, where people support one another and feel comfortable being themselves.

• Where meaningful work meets real growth. You will tackle complex, real world problems at the forefront of platform engineering, AI, security, and scalable systems. Your growth is supported by learning budgets, Udemy access, a clear career framework, internal mobility, and thought leadership opportunities that take your impact beyond ClearRoute.

At ClearRoute, we believe diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes, and inclusion creates the conditions for everyone to thrive. We are proud to have built a family friendly working environment and have many employees who have caring responsibilities alongside work. We welcome applications from people who require flexibility and will be happy to discuss needs on an individual basis.

We are committed to fostering a culture where all team members feel respected, supported, and empowered to do their best work. We celebrate individuality and our differences and understand that some differences may mean that you require changes made to the interview process. We are happy to cater to your needs to make the interview accessible, if this is something you require please let us know by emailing us at [email protected]