Tech Lead (London, Hybrid)
Job Title: Tech Lead
Location: Remote-first (with a preference for candidates commutable to London at least once a week)
About Our Client:
Our client is on a mission to transform accessible travel through pioneering technology. Their platform includes smartphone apps for passengers and frontline staff, along with backend web solutions for travel providers. Serving over 600,000 users in the UK and expanding internationally, the company works with a diverse user base and major clients in the rail and aviation sectors.
Why Join Our Client?
This role offers the chance to make a meaningful impact on accessible travel, creating products that transform lives while tackling complex technical challenges, in a fast-growing pioneering space. You’ll be the tech lead for a talented team during an exciting phase of growth and innovation, leaving a lasting legacy in an organisation driven by purpose and ambition.
Role Overview:
As a Tech Lead with system design and mentoring responsibilities, you will play a pivotal role in advancing the company’s engineering capabilities and mentoring a team responsible for critical software development. Reporting to the Engineering Manager, you will balance technical leadership, coding best practices, system design & architecture, and client stakeholder engagement.
Key Responsibilities:
Provide architectural and system design leadership to ensure flexibility, scalability, and correctness.
Mentor a team of 6-8 engineers, fostering collaboration and a culture of continual improvement.
Oversee the development of high-quality new software using TDD principles while navigating previous codebases.
Act as a key person for large clients, ensuring clear communication and realistic expectations.
Balance immediate delivery needs with long-term strategic goals, guiding the company toward a SaaS-oriented model.
Personal Characteristics:
Emotionally intelligent leader with strong interpersonal skills.
Thrives in high-pressure, fast-paced start-up type environments.
Empathetic yet firm, inspiring teams through transformation.
Clear and concise communicator, adept at engaging with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
A builder mindset who enjoys creating "order out of chaos."
Key Technical Experience:
Proven experience in system architecture and design for high-availability consumer-facing web and mobile applications.
An expert Ruby developer with a strong understanding of TDD, mobile, frontend, and backend.
Familiarity with techniques for managing legacy codebases .
Advocate for automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and agile methodologies.
Experience with accessibility standards and practices (desirable but not essential).
Key Experience:
Proven success as a tech lead, ideally in a remote or distributed environment.
Strong background in external stakeholder management, including presenting technical updates and negotiating with enterprise clients.
Fosters collaboration between frontend and backend teams to achieve shared goals.
Success Metrics:
Customer Satisfaction: External stakeholders trust and value your leadership.
Team Performance: Evidence of improved delivery quality and a collaborative, motivated team dynamic.
Technical Leadership: A demonstrable improvement in the robustness, scalability, and maintainability of the codebase.
Preferred Background:
Experience in startups or small SaaS companies working with enterprise clients.
Familiarity with government contracting and public sector projects.
Exposure to professional services transitioning to product-oriented models.
Ideal Candidate Profile:
A backend-focused full-stack engineer adept at frontend collaboration.
A tech lead with strong stakeholder management skills, simplifying technical complexities for business audiences.
Thrives on the challenge of working with legacy systems and driving incremental improvement.
Interview Process:
Stage 1: Informal discussion with CTO (30 mins phone)
Stage 2: Coding interview (1hr remote)
Stage 3: System design interview (1hr remote)
Stage 4: Onsite: in-person interview focusing on leadership and communication.