Lead Web Engineer (.NET) in Wantage

Why Airbox? You’re more likely to love your work when that work has a purpose, when it’s meaningful and when it’s protecting lives. And, at Airbox Systems, it will. Here’s why. We are driven by passion and great people who share our enthusiasm for trying to make the world a better place. Our friendly team includes individuals with backgrounds in military, aviation, and law enforcement. Our experience brings first‑hand insight into frontline operations in the air and on the ground to enable cutting‑edge concepts for improving the service that we deliver.

At Airbox, our values can be described as behavioral guidance. They are the principles and beliefs that provide a cohesive vision and define who we are as a business. In doing so, they define our organisation internally, and externally with our stakeholders and customers. In essence, they are our “true north” that help us to navigate our organisation through prosperous times as well as uncertain periods. Our company beliefs and values are embodied in our culture. Whilst we celebrate the diversity of the people we work with, there are certain values and attributes all of us share – whatever your background, these are the qualities we are looking for in the people we hire: Commitment, Positive Realism, Ethics, Accountability, Humanity, Quality, and Delight.

What this role is about: We’re looking for a hands‑on Lead Web Engineer to drive our backend and full‑stack web development efforts and lead a team of 7 .NET engineers. This role is critical to shaping the technical direction of our Web APIs and Web Applications while ensuring we deliver scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions that support our product roadmap. In collaboration with the other Lead Engineers, you’ll be responsible for setting engineering standards, making architectural decisions, and ensuring high quality execution across both backend and UI. While leadership is a core part of the role, this is not a purely managerial position. You’ll remain deeply involved in design and development, leading by example. You’ll work closely with Architects, Senior Engineers, Product, Mobile Teams, and QA to drive strong solution designs, align technical delivery with business goals, and continuously improve how we build and ship software. This role reports directly to the Head of Engineering and offers the opportunity to have a real impact on technology direction, team performance, and overall engineering culture.

What you’ll do:

• Technical Leadership & Architecture: Own and help shape the technical direction and architecture of our web platforms, including backend services, APIs, and web user interfaces. Collaborate closely with Architects and Senior Engineers during the solution design process, contributing to system design, technical decisions, and trade‑off discussions. Design and evolve scalable, secure, and high‑performance systems using modern .NET technologies. Define, document, and enforce best practices for API design, system integration, coding standards, and technical documentation. Guide architectural decisions across MVC, Blazor, and modern JavaScript/TypeScript based front ends. Ensure systems are designed with performance, reliability, security, and long‑term maintainability in mind. Drive continuous improvement of engineering standards, tooling, frameworks, and technical practices.
• Team Leadership, Metrics & Delivery: Lead, mentor, and support a team of 7 .NET engineers, fostering a collaborative, accountable, and high‑performing team culture. Own delivery outcomes for the team, ensuring work is planned, tracked, and delivered predictably and to a high standard. Define, collect, and report on meaningful engineering metrics (e.g., delivery predictability, throughput, quality, technical debt, operational health). Use metrics to actively adjust team ways of working, improve processes, and raise engineering standards over time. Continuously assess team performance, capacity, and skill balance, making recommendations to improve effectiveness and sustainability. Act as an escalation point for complex technical challenges, delivery risks, and cross‑team dependencies.
• Hands‑On Development: Remain hands‑on in the codebase, contributing to backend services, APIs, and web applications as needed. Lead by example through high‑quality, well‑tested, and maintainable code. Conduct and participate in code reviews, design reviews, and technical discussions. Collaborate with frontend and mobile teams to ensure clean API contracts and seamless integration between platforms. Ensure appropriate levels of test coverage, observability, and operational readiness for production systems. Participate in diagnosing and resolving production issues, driving root cause analysis and improvements.
• Collaboration: Work closely with Product Managers to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions. Coordinate with Mobile Engineering teams to align API design, shared services, and release timelines. Partner with QA to ensure quality is built into the development lifecycle rather than added at the end. Communicate clearly with stakeholders on technical decisions, trade‑offs, risks, and progress. Contribute to building a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement across engineering.

About You: At least 5 years of professional software development experience, with strong experience building .NET based systems. A minimum of 3 years of prior experience in a Lead Engineer, Tech Lead, or similar role, with direct responsibility for guiding and mentoring engineers. Strong backend expertise using .NET (C#), RESTful APIs, and modern architectural patterns (microservices, event driven architectures…). Solid full stack experience, including MVC, Blazor, and frontend development using JavaScript and TypeScript. Strong understanding of web application architecture, security, performance, and scalability concerns. Demonstrated experience using metrics to measure, report on, and improve team performance and delivery outcomes. Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments and collaborating closely with Product, QA, and other engineering teams. Proficiency with version control systems (e.g., Git) and modern development workflows. Strong experience with relational databases (we use PostgreSQL mainly), with a solid understanding of data modelling, query optimisation, and transactional behaviour. Proven ability to work effectively with Entity Framework, including knowing when not to use an ORM and how to write efficient, hand‑crafted SQL when performance, complexity, or control requires it. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences.

Preferred Skills & Qualifications: Experience working with cloud platforms (we use AWS) and modern hosting architectures. Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated build, test, and deployment processes. Experience designing and evolving distributed systems or micro services architectures. Exposure to modern frontend frameworks and tooling beyond .NET (e.g., React). Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

What we offer: The chance to work with a passionate team that’s working together every day towards our shared big ambitious goal. A dynamic, flexible and fun scale‑up work environment with a highly talented team. 26 days holiday per year, plus public holidays. Private medical cover with Bupa for all our colleagues. Pension scheme, offering up to 6% matching contribution. Up to 20 Nomad Working Days per annum. Electric Car Scheme.

Flexible & Hybrid Working: We said you’ll get freedom to work in a way that is best for you, and that extends to being in the office – or not. Work better from home? No worries. Prefer the office? Come on down. We have 2 mandatory Townhall days; Spring and Autumn, where the whole business gets together. When you visit the office you won’t just find rows and rows of desks. No, you’ll find our colleagues meeting on the walking pads, having planning sessions over a game of tennis table or grabbing a bean bag in our ‘Quality’ collaborative space - that’s right we live our values so much, we named our meeting spaces after them. You can also shape work around your life at Airbox Systems; most colleagues work our core hours of 9am-5pm with others flexibly between 7am-7pm. Whether you’re fitting in a spin class or the school run, you’ll have the flexibility for whatever matters most. All we ask in return is that you produce great work, but when you’re working with passionate people, that part comes naturally.

Connect with us: Interested in the role, or Airbox in general, but you don’t meet 100% of the requirements? We’d love to hear from you! We encourage you to connect with us here; we’d be excited to see if your unique skill set and experience could be a match for future roles.