Lead Engineer

Our Team: How We Enrich Everyday Life You’ll be joining Bauer Media Audio (BMA), Europe’s biggest commercial audio broadcaster, connecting audiences across nine markets to the music, stories and experiences they love. Bauer Media Audio is making a significant investment in a new in‑house software development hub in Manchester. This new hub reinforces Manchester’s position as a key technology centre for Bauer Media Audio, alongside its existing locations. We’re creating a new development team to build innovative business critical solutions that will power Bauer Media’s audio platform of the future. Our team thrives on collaboration, innovation, and a shared commitment to delivering high‑quality, scalable solutions, working closely with product and technology peers to ensure our platforms meet the evolving needs of the business and our international markets.

The Difference You Will Make As Lead Engineer, you will combine hands‑on technical contribution with the day‑to‑day leadership and people management of a software engineering squad within our new engineering department. You will work alongside your team, writing and reviewing code, guiding technical decisions, maintaining engineering standards, supporting the growth of individual engineers, and acting as the connective tissue between your squad and the broader engineering organisation. You’ll work closely with the Director of Engineering and leaders from adjacent disciplines to ensure your team’s work aligns with our technical direction and product priorities. You’ll lead with empathy and clarity to foster a culture of continuous improvement, shared ownership, and engineering excellence within your squad. Team leadership roles are vital to our success so you will play a key role in helping to create a diverse, welcoming and inclusive environment that is psychologically safe, where everyone can be their authentic selves and do their best work, every day.

Your Role

• Grow your team: Support your engineers’ career development and build a motivated, high‑performing squad through regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and by creating individual growth plans. Mentor junior and mid‑level engineers – fostering a continuous improvement culture and helping the team build technical confidence and skills.
• Contribute technically: Write and review code as an active contributor to your squad’s delivery – guiding by example on quality, maintainability, and best practice. Guide architectural decisions and technical direction within your squad and contribute to broader engineering discussions.
• Drive delivery and planning: Plan and manage squad capacity across projects – forecast hiring needs and allocate resources effectively to meet delivery commitments. Participate in roadmap, refinement, and sprint planning sessions – working closely with Product colleagues and adjacent discipline leads, providing technical input, ensuring clear scoping, and surfacing dependencies and risks early.
• Uphold engineering standards: Define and sustain coding standards and review processes – conducting code reviews focused on quality, maintainability, and consistency. Track and manage technical debt within your squad – balancing debt reduction with feature delivery and escalating systemic issues where needed.
• Ensure operational excellence: Participate in the in‑hours and out‑of‑hours incident management rotas, providing hands‑on technical support and clear, calm communication during high‑pressure situations. Advocate for the ‘you build it, you run it’ ethos – ensuring your squad is equipped to deploy, operate, and support the systems they build as part of a DevOps culture where second‑line out‑of‑hours support is the expectation.

The Skills You Will Bring

• Technical capability: Solid hands‑on software engineering experience, with active proficiency in full‑stack or backend development – enough to contribute meaningfully to delivery and guide technical decisions. Modern engineering practices – CI / CD, version control workflows, code review, testing strategies, and cloud‑based deployment. Agile methodologies and the experience to implement the right approach for your squad’s context. AI trends within engineering, an interest in AI‑assisted development tooling (e.g. Copilot, Claude) and how it can improve productivity and code quality.
• Leadership and people skills: Leading or mentoring with a servant‑leadership mindset and a genuine focus on the growth and wellbeing of your colleagues. Communicating with a range of people and organisational roles, managing stakeholder expectations, representing your team’s needs, and fostering collaboration across multidisciplinary teams. Acting as an escalation point for your team, supporting them through complex or time‑sensitive situations. Taking an organised and structured approach to planning, managing priorities and keeping delivery on track.
• Industry and delivery experience: Leading a software engineering team or squad in a product‑led, multidisciplinary organisation, with a track record of consistent, quality delivery. Working in a team operating agile software delivery practices and principles, SCRUM experience is a plus. Adapting to evolving business priorities communicating calmly and clearly when under pressure. Media, audio streaming, or consumer platform experience is a plus.

Working Pattern and Location: This is a permanent, hybrid, full‑time role with an in‑office presence twice a week in our Manchester hub. Participation in in‑hours and out‑of‑hours incident management rotas is required.

Why Join Us? The chance to be part of a team building platforms that reach millions of listeners across Europe, with real impact on the products people use every day. A growing engineering organisation investing heavily in its people, practices, and technology – with genuine support for leadership development. A collaborative, product‑led environment where engineering has a clear and respected voice in shaping business outcomes. An environment that values empathy, accountability, continuous learning, and engineering excellence.

Interview Process: Intro call with Talent Acquisition Remote technical interview.

What’s in it for you: You’ll have 28 days holiday, bank holidays.