Senior Java Engineer: 6 month contract. Outside IR35, 2 days a week in Manchester.I'm looking for a senior Java Engineer to join a small team working on building a load of new backend services for an existing platform. The role requires someone who can be in office a couple of days a week to collaborate with the small engineering and product team. What you’ll be doing Building event-driven services and integrations on KafkaDeploying and running services on AWS, working closely with DevOps on infrastructure and pipelinesWriting clean, tested, production-ready code, and setting the standard through code reviewWorking directly with product and engineering leads to turn requirements into working features fast Required experience: Strong commercial experience in Java (17+) and Spring Boot, ideally Spring Boot 3Hands-on Kafka experience: producers, consumers, topic design, and handling failure and replayAWS in production, e.g. ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, S3, SQS/SNSRESTful API and microservices design, plus relational databases (PostgreSQL or similar)Solid testing discipline: JUnit, Mockito, integration testing (Testcontainers a plus)CI/CD, Docker, and comfort with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or CloudFormation)Previous contract experience, landing quickly and delivering on a new build Hands-on use of AI-assisted development in your daily workflow, such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor or ChatGPT, for scaffolding, refactoring, test generation and reviewing generated code criticallyKubernetes, observability tooling (Datadog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) As an industry leading, nationwide Marketing, Digital, Analytics, IT and Design recruitment agency, we are continually receiving new assignments to work on, so keep a close eye on our website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages for a full list of current permanent and interim opportunities as well as marketplace news and fun stuff. Forward Role is operating as an employment agency.

Good data engineering isn't just about moving data. It's about making it reliable, accessible and valuable when it matters most. Data Engineer - Defence & National Security Location: Blandford, Dorset (2-3 days on-site)Salary: £50,000-£75,000 per annumClearance: Must be eligible for high-level UK Government security clearanceLevel: Mid/SeniorA specialist technology consultancy working across Defence and National Security is looking for an experienced Data Engineer to design and deliver secure, scalable data solutions supporting critical MOD programmes.You'll work closely with technical teams and customers, building robust data pipelines, improving data quality and helping shape how complex data is managed and used.What you'll be working on Designing and developing scalable ETL pipelines for complex datasets Building data solutions using Snowflake, Databricks, Python and SQL Developing data models to support analytics and operational decision-making Working with cloud platforms, including AWS and Azure Improving data quality, governance, integration and performance Supporting technical decisions and data engineering best practices Why it's worth a look Work on meaningful MOD programmes with genuine technical challenges Influence data architecture, tooling and engineering standards Flexible working, professional development, pension, healthcare and a collaborative engineering culture Must have: Strong commercial data engineering experience, hands-on Snowflake and Databricks, Python and SQL, ETL development and data modelling. Experience with cloud-based data platforms and data governance.Nice to have: Apache Airflow, Spark, AWS/Azure, data visualisation and experience delivering solutions within Defence or secure Government environments.Clearance: Due to the sensitive nature of the projects, candidates must be British citizens, have lived permanently in the UK for the last five years and be eligible to obtain high-level UK Government security clearance.As an industry leading, nationwide Marketing, Digital, Analytics, IT and Design recruitment agency, we are continually receiving new assignments to work on, so keep a close eye on our website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages for a full list of current permanent and interim opportunities as well as marketplace news and fun stuff. Forward Role is operating as an employment agency.

Building AI models is one thing. Getting them into production and delivering real impact is another. Lead Machine Learning Engineer - AI Location: Hybrid - UK (TBC)Salary: £60,000-£90,000 per annumClearance: Active UK Government security clearance requiredLevel: LeadA technology consultancy working across UK Government and National Security is looking for a Lead Machine Learning Engineer to design, develop and deploy advanced AI/ML solutions.You'll combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership, working on complex challenges where AI has a genuine real-world impact.What you'll be working on Designing, developing and deploying complex ML models into production Building MLOps pipelines covering CI/CD, monitoring and retraining Researching Generative AI technologies and developing proofs of concept Optimising and fine-tuning models for performance and scalability Integrating AI/ML solutions into existing secure systems Mentoring engineers and influencing technical decisions Why it's worth a look Ownership of AI/ML solutions from initial research through to production Meaningful Government and National Security projects with genuine technical challenges Private healthcare, funded certifications, paid study leave and flexible hybrid working Must have: Strong hands-on ML engineering experience, including production model deployment, MLOps, CI/CD and model monitoring. Broad knowledge of ML algorithms and frameworks, with experience providing technical leadership.Nice to have: Generative AI research, advanced prototyping, model fine-tuning and experience working within Government or National Security environments.Clearance: Due to the sensitive nature of the projects, candidates must already hold a high level of UK Government security clearance.As an industry leading, nationwide Marketing, Digital, Analytics, IT and Design recruitment agency, we are continually receiving new assignments to work on, so keep a close eye on our website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages for a full list of current permanent and interim opportunities as well as marketplace news and fun stuff. Forward Role is operating as an employment agency.