Lead Software Engineer in Leeds

We are looking to recruit a Lead Software Engineer to join our Engineering Community and take technical ownership of the delivery of our large-scale, operationally critical client projects. This is a senior, client-facing technical leadership role. You'll own the technical delivery of a project or subsystem end-to-end – from concept through to live operation – while mentoring engineers and helping grow our engineering capability.

What you'll be doing:

• Owning the technical delivery of a project or subsystem end-to-end – design, development, documentation and release – ensuring solutions are of a high engineering standard and fit for operational use.
• Defining and owning the technical quality processes for your engagement, including build pipelines, code quality, testing and source control.
• Leading client engagements for development, from project inception through to delivery, acting as the primary technical point of contact.
• Leading technical discussions and aligning stakeholders and teams around a resolution.
• Owning requirements analysis and solution design, translating business needs into robust technical architecture.
• Continually reviewing tools and processes to identify and drive improvements within your engagement, and advising clients on opportunities for improvement beyond it.
• Mentoring and supporting the growth of Mid-Level to Senior Engineers, including task-level support and technical quality coaching.
• Contributing to presales and pitches for new work, and building trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders.
• Building deep expertise in one or more technology ecosystems, and sharing that knowledge across Answer to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Taking ownership for impact-assessing change and managing delivery risk.
• Ensuring the solutions you own are secure, scalable, observable and cost-optimised.
• Championing the effective and responsible use of AI-assisted engineering tools within your team, keeping abreast of new tooling and sharing learning across Answer.
• Identifying opportunities where AI-powered capabilities (for example LLM integrations or intelligent automation) could add value within client engagements, bringing in our AI Engineering capability where deeper specialist expertise is needed.

What you'll bring to Answer:

• Strong background in client-facing roles with excellent stakeholder management.
• Proven experience providing technical leadership to both engineering teams and clients.
• Hands-on experience leading the delivery of large-scale development projects.
• Experience mentoring and developing engineers.
• Agile software development experience with continuous delivery.
• .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, C#.
• SQL and NoSQL database experience.
• AWS/Azure experience.
• JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks.
• Strong understanding of Agile software development practices and tools.
• Confidence guiding a team's adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools and practices safely and effectively.

It would be great if you also had experience in some of these, but if not we'll help you with them:

• Client-facing experience gained from a technical consultancy or software vendor.
• Experience working directly with executive and director-level stakeholders.
• Technical leadership across multiple development teams.
• Defining technical solutions including integration with legacy systems.
• Experience of system-to-system integration and interoperability.
• Common design patterns, such as event-based architecture, CQRS or Domain-Driven Design.
• Experience integrating AI-powered features (for example LLM-based assistants or intelligent automation) into existing applications.
• Experience with platform engineering practices, such as building internal developer platforms, paved-road tooling or self-service infrastructure to improve delivery teams' productivity.

The perks of being @ Answer:

• We’re an Employee-Owned Company. After 12 months – through the Employee Ownership Trust you will be part of the ownership of Answer; a major factor in driving engagement, retention and growth for our people.
• Competitive salary.
• Flexible annual leave (buy/sell and carry forward).
• Twice a year income-tax free bonus based on company performance - it’s a reward for being a part of our EOT journey.
• Continuous training and development - if you want to learn, we’ll provide the support you need.
• Flexible Pension - we match your own contributions up to 5%.
• A flexible Healthcare cash plan so you can fund the care you value most.
• A packed social calendar including; end of year party (partners invited) and Summer away days, monthly and quarterly company team socials.
• Parking at Head Offices in central Leeds, plus Cycle2Work & Green Car Lease schemes to help get you here.
• The chance to give back – get involved nationally and regionally with partnerships to get people from different backgrounds into tech, as well as lots of charity and community events.
• Hybrid and flexible working – you can vary your working when and where you work, to allow you to collaborate better, feed your creativity, and take the time and space to focus when you need to.

Diversity and Inclusion:

At Answer we proudly embrace diversity and inclusion - we want to create a safe environment for everyone to bring their true selves to work. We will do everything we can to support your application. If you require any adjustments to be made to your application (whether that’s support with our interview questions, adjusting how we interview, or financial support with our hiring process) then please speak to Lesley Waghorn, Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant (lesley.waghorn@answerdigital.com).

A bit more about us:

Answer Digital is a highly successful digital transformation consultancy headquartered in Leeds. We’re a company on a fast growth trajectory with a reputation of delivering large-scale, operational critical solutions. People are at the heart of everything we do - so much so we’re owned by our people. It sets us apart from most digital businesses you’ll meet and defines our culture and values. Our people are invested in everything we do, because we are invested in them.

Our Interview Process:

We pride ourselves on having a fair but flexible recruitment process, we want to create a platform where you can show us your best. For us, keeping it simple means you can focus on understanding if our people, values and the work we do are right for you. Our typical process can be broken down into 3 stages:

• Recruiter call: This normally lasts 15-30 minutes. We will talk to you about Answer Digital, the type of work we do, and an overview of the role. We’ll ask you some questions about your current situation and why you’re interested in working here. Here, we’d advise asking any “people” questions, anything about our culture, career progression or approach to flexible working.
• Skills based interview: This interview will be with 2 people, normally from the team you’re applying to work with. We can do this stage remote or in person, whichever you’d prefer. This interview will involve questions around your experience, the skills you’ve gained and the work you’ve done. We’ll also ask questions about the role and challenges you might face and how you’d face them. Here, we’d recommend asking questions about the role, the day to day responsibilities and what life in the team is like.
• Cultural/Value interview: This interview will be with 2 of our Leadership team, either our Directors or Capability Leads. It will focus on our culture and values, talking about our values and what they mean to us as well as understanding what values are important to you and how you like to work. This interview is about making sure Answer is right for you, as much as the other way around. Here, we advise you to ask as many questions around our business model, our ambitious growth plans and anything to do with Answer as a business.