Full Stack Engineer - Java/React at Hedgehog Lab, London/Bristol/Edinburgh/Hybrid, 3-6 Months+, £Contract Rate (Outside IR35)

Java and Spring Boot on the back, React and Next on the front, Kafka tying it together. We're hiring Full Stack Engineers to build customer-facing services that thousands of people rely on every day, for a large regulated UK organisation. High traffic, real users, no room for flaky software.

What you'll do:

• Build backend services in Java and Spring Boot.

• Build front ends in React, Next.js and TypeScript, with Node where it fits.

• Design event-driven services using Kafka.

• Work with PostgreSQL and deploy on OpenShift.

What we're looking for:

• Strong Java and Spring Boot.

• Solid React, Next.js and TypeScript.

• Experience with event-driven architectures and Kafka.

• Comfortable with PostgreSQL, REST and GraphQL, and containerised deployment.

• Comfortable using AI-assisted development tools like GitHub Copilot as part of your everyday workflow.

Bonus points for OpenShift and financial services experience.

About hedgehog lab:

We're hedgehog lab, a digital product and engineering consultancy. For nearly 20 years we've embedded engineers inside the teams of well-known organisations in regulated, high-trust sectors, from financial services to the public sector.

We're a certified B Corp.

We're also serious about AI-assisted engineering. We've built our own agentic tooling and cut time-to-merge by around 60% on recent work, and our people get to use that on real projects.

The details:

• Contract, outside IR35.

• 3 to 6 months, with strong potential to extend.

• Hybrid. You'll work from the client's London, Bristol or Edinburgh office a couple of times a week.