Lead Software Engineer

You will lead a small product engineering team while staying close to the code. This is not a role where you hand the technical work to somebody else. You will set direction make pragmatic architecture decisions help the team deliver reliably and step into the difficult engineering work when that is where you add most value.

Our estate is mixed. We have and React applications and systems SQL-heavy business logic APIs integrations and mobile components that still matter to day-to-day operations. We need someone who can own what we have today and help us modernise it sensibly without rewriting things just because they are old.

A significant part of the estate is legacy and business-critical. You will work with and C# applications Framework Web Forms SQL Server databases with substantial business logic in stored procedures older integration patterns and applications that have evolved over many years. Alongside that we already have React/TypeScript APIs and Azure services in production.

This is not a greenfield rewrite. The job is to understand what we have keep it reliable and make sensible decisions about what to leave alone what to improve in place and what to modernise. Over time we are moving toward clearer APIs stronger automated testing repeatable CI/CD infrastructure as code and better use of Azure platform services.

• Own the technical direction for the products and services within your team aligned with the wider Engineering & Data architecture.
• Lead solution design make clear technical decisions and document the important ones.
• Make sure solutions are secure maintainable observable supportable and proportionate to the problem being solved.
• Understand the end-to-end production stack for your products and lead the technical response to complex incidents and root-cause investigations.
• Make sensible trade-offs between legacy support technical debt delivery pressure and new capability.
• Help shape common engineering patterns across applications APIs integrations data access and cloud services.

• Take accountability for the technical delivery of the teams work from refinement through to production.
• Work with Product and QA to make sure work is understood testable and small enough to deliver safely.
• Raise risks dependencies and blockers early and give stakeholders a clear view of technical health and delivery confidence.
• Set and improve standards for code quality automated testing security logging monitoring source control and CI/CD.
• Promote smaller safer daytime releases and reduce unnecessary manual deployment steps.
• Use metrics and production learning to improve engineering performance reliability and delivery flow.

• Line manage a small group of engineers typically around four direct reports.
• Run useful 1:1s performance and development conversations and give clear timely feedback.
• Coach engineers through pairing code reviews technical guidance and hands-on support.
• Build capability across the team and reduce single points of dependency around people or systems.
• Create a team culture where people can challenge decisions ask for help and take ownership.

• Contribute directly to complex high-risk or high-impact engineering work.
• Design and build full-stack solutions across front-end back-end APIs integrations and data access.
• Lead code reviews and help the team write testable maintainable code rather than simply getting changes over the line.
• Diagnose production issues using logs telemetry SQL profiling and application monitoring tools.
• Support the modernisation of legacy code in manageable steps while keeping business-critical services stable.

• C# across both the current and legacy estate Framework Web Forms Core REST APIs and background/service workloads.
• React JavaScript/TypeScript and Redux-style front-end patterns with Blazor also present in the wider engineering landscape.
• Microsoft SQL Server and T-SQL including applications with significant database-side logic.
• Entity Framework Dapper and other pragmatic data-access approaches.
• Git Azure DevOps YAML pipelines and CI/CD.
• Azure services used to host and integrate applications including App Service Functions API Management Logic Apps Storage Key Vault networking identity and monitoring where relevant.
• Application Insights Log Analytics and structured application telemetry for diagnosis and support.
• and applications that still support important business processes.
• Xamarin MAUI or similar mobile technologies where they remain part of the product estate.

• More consistent and Azure application patterns.
• Reusable CI/CD templates infrastructure as code and stronger DevSecOps practices.
• Playwright and wider automated test coverage built into normal delivery.
• Better observability structured logging and production diagnostics.
• Clearer API and integration boundaries with less point-to-point or manually managed integration.
• Progressive replacement of unsupported legacy technology without destabilising the services that depend on it.
• Smaller safer releases with clear ownership and better deployment confidence.
• Better use of Azure landing zones Bicep and platform standards so teams can deploy consistently rather than reinventing infrastructure for every application.

• Strong commercial experience as a senior or lead software engineer with substantial hands-on delivery experience.
• Strong C#/.NET capability and experience designing building and supporting production APIs and web applications.
• Good front-end experience with React/TypeScript or a comparable modern framework.
• Strong SQL and relational database understanding including the ability to diagnose application and performance problems that cross the application/database boundary.
• Good judgement around architecture and technical trade-offs including knowing when not to introduce new technology.
• Experience with automated testing CI/CD source control and cloud delivery.
• Experience leading engineering delivery and raising standards across a team.
• People leadership or line-management experience or clear evidence that you are ready to take it on.
• Able to explain technical decisions clearly to engineers Product colleagues and non-technical stakeholders.

• Azure API Management Functions Logic Apps Service Bus or integration-heavy application estates.
• Blazor or modernising applications.
• Playwright DevSecOps tooling infrastructure as code or Bicep.
• Healthcare regulated environments or systems where reliability and auditability matter.

The team delivers predictably production issues are easier to diagnose quality is designed in rather than inspected at the end engineers are growing in capability and the product estate becomes easier to support and change over time. The role will normally remain around 60-80% hands-on depending on the needs of the team.

Required Experience:

IC