Lead Software Engineer

The Opportunity

We're seeking a passionate and experienced Lead Software Engineer. As an experienced technical leader within our Engineering discipline, you will be empowered to apply your expertise in software design, development, quality assurance, and maintenance, while helping foster a strong focus on excellence and best practice.

You’ll join a talented team of dynamic and driven professional problem solvers; creative thinkers and solutions builders who thrive on helping clients meet the most exciting digital transformation challenges.

Make a difference and advance your career by helping deliver some of the UK’s most important #tech4good projects, making the world a smarter, safer, greener, and healthier place.

At a certifiedGreat Place to Work®you’ll experience a dynamic and nurturing environment that rewards initiative and flexibility and enjoy a career path tailored to your own aspirations.

About Us

Founded in 1992, we are a successful, growing International digital transformation consultancy. We deliver multi-Queen’s Award for innovation winning platforms and services that support large-scale digital transformation. Our digital, data and technology solutions are used by globally recognised public and private sector brands operating in a variety of sectors including Civil Defence, Healthcare, Sustainable Environment and Land Asset Management, and Digital Democracy.

Key Accountabilities and Responsibilities

A Lead Engineer oversees the planning, design, development, integration and testing of high-quality software solutions that meet business and user needs. Equally, they are proactive in identifying continuous improvement opportunities, making use of best practice design patterns, methods and tools. This includes:

• Taking technical responsibility for the high-quality engineering of complex services across all stages (design, build, test, deploy, operate, and continually improve).
• Implementing end-to-end architectures for larger services, ensuring deliverables are of a high standard and maintaining quality documentation.
• Structuring and providing technical assurance for the work of teams, advising on design patterns and engineering approaches to ensure software quality, including non-functional requirements.
• Guiding team members and participating in the hands-on implementation of best practices in engineering.
• Collaborating with DevOps engineers to implement CI/CD pipelines for supporting ongoing software quality.
• Building effective relationships with clients and stakeholders, offering options for decision-making, and providing commercially sound advice and solutions.
• Offering formal and informal advice and guidance in the development of strategies, frameworks and standards as required.
• Collaborating with Engineering, User-Centred Design, Service Operations, Delivery Management, and Data Science practitioners to achieve objectives and successes within multi-disciplinary teams.
• Playing a leading role in the Engineering discipline to maintain an energised community of engineers, influencing company-wide innovation, best practice adoption, standards, tools, and artefacts.
• Supporting the ongoing growth of Informed’s Engineering capability by helping to recruit technical staff and contributing to InformedACADEMY™.

Requirements

• Experience collaborating with client technical and business stakeholders to define solution deliverables that meet business and user needs.
• An unbiased and independent perspective on technology stacks used to deliver a particular solution.
• Understanding of software engineering best practices and design patterns for enterprise-scale solutions.
• Proven track record of leading technical teams to solve complex problems and deliver innovative solutions.
• Background in Agile delivery environments, delivering software solutions in controlled increments (e.g., following Scrum, Agile Delivery phases, GDS Service Manual, etc.).  
• Broad understanding of modern programming languages, leading frameworks, distributed system architectures (e.g., microservices), and the full software development lifecycle, including use of CI/CD pipelines and automated testing.
• Strong planning skills, with the ability to assign commercially robust estimates and work with delivery managers and Product Owners to align delivery plans with business objectives.
• Experience overseeing and quality assuring the technical delivery of team members, mentoring others on best practice.
• Commercial awareness with ability to balance trade-offs where necessary to ensure successful delivery.
• Effective communicator who can explain complex information to stakeholders, anticipate obstacles, and work under pressure within an agile environment.
• Willingness to maintain relevant, up-to-date practitioner skills through continuing professional development and training, including accreditations/certifications.

Desirable skills and experience

• Experience working in a professional services/consultancy environment.
• Ability to deliver as part of multiple projects, concurrently across multiple teams.
• Experience of the GOV.UK Digital Service Standard and Technology Code of Practice.
• Proven experience delivering a complex software solution hosted on one of the leading cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), with working knowledge of other cloud platforms.
• Demonstrable expertise in software engineering practitioner skills (i.e. a programming language, frameworks, cloud technologies) evidenced by domain-relevant accreditations/certifications at an advanced level.
• Hands-on knowledge of designing and implementing software solutions capable of handling sensitive data (e.g., Personally Identifiable Information or payment information). 
• Experience implementing software solutions that operationalise data science and Machine Learning components.

Personal Qualities

• A hands-on problem-solver who leads by example, demonstrating commitment to software quality.
• A clear communicator, calm, can-do, resilient, and comfortable being challenged.
• Strong planning, time management, and organisational skills, with the ability to balance conflicting priorities.
• Detail-oriented, reliable, and punctual.
• Inquisitive, using critical thinking to ask lots of questions, overcome biases, break assumptions and consider different perspectives.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Bring strong technical leadership to your team and the wider discipline.
• Able to explain difficult or sensitive topics; working to build consensus internally and with the wider business.
• Able to quickly

Benefits

Our benefits package compliments our highly competitive salaries and our great working environment. We believe that our people should be properly rewarded for their commitment to the continued success of our business through a comprehensive and flexible range of benefits.

These can include:

• InformedACADEMY™– We offer excellent career development opportunities through our award-winning personal and professional development programmes, including support with professional certifications.
• Industry leading health and wellbeing plan – We partner with several wellbeing support functions to cater to each individuals need, including 24/7 GP services, mental health support and physical health support.
• Hybrid working*
• Private Health Care Cover*
• Generous life assurance cover*
• Gym Membership*
• Weekly office lunch
• Onsite massage sessions
• 25 paid working days holiday per year plus bank holidays*
• Sabbatical Leave Scheme*
• Enhanced Maternity Leave and Pay*
• Enhanced Paternity Leave and Pay*
• Company Pension Contribution
• Profit Share Scheme
• Payment of professional subscriptions
• Generous referral scheme with no limits on the number of referrals

*Qualifying period applies

Culture

We are proud to nurture a workplace culture that is diverse, inclusive, rewarding, and egalitarian.

We strive to live up to our values of Innovation, Excellence, and Integrity by thinking about things differently, always doing our best, and acting in good faith at all times.

We’re a team of passionate problem solvers. We take pride in helping our clients accelerate and de-risk digital business change so that we can collaborate and codesign world class digital services that solve complex business and safety critical problems, particularly where place, location or geography are important.

Our workplace culture reflects how we go about our work, the type of work that we choose to do, and our commitment and contribution to the sustainable social, environmental, and economic development aims of the communities that we are part of. 

We focus both on technical skills and equally importantly, on the cultural fit of prospective new colleagues. Our success relies on fostering an environment where creativity and collaboration produces great outcomes for our people, our clients, and our partners.