Lead Software Engineer – Backend, APIs & Architecture

OVERVIEW

This is a hands-on Lead Software Engineer role where you'll be writing code, designing integrations and solving hard technical problems day-to-day, driving the technical direction and improving how we do engineering across Platform Engineering. You'll be a recognised domain authority: shaping architectural vision, setting the technical bar, and actively elevating the engineers and leads around you. You will bring both strong backend engineering craft and the presence to make the whole team better through technical credibility, clear thinking, and a genuine investment in how the team grows and delivers.

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING

• Craft
  • Designs and documents clear architectural diagrams and key decision records that are accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Ensures the team is using suitable engineering practices, spotting knowledge gaps and helping adopt new and emerging best practices and tooling where appropriate.
  • Enforces quality and testing best practices from design through to production.
  • Articulates the value of addressing tech debt in terms that resonate with business stakeholders, and creates space to address it iteratively.
  • Brings strong technical grounding with enough parity with the team to earn trust quickly, without the instinct to redesign systems from the ground up.
• Delivery
  • Leads the delivery of scalable backend services leveraging Event Driven Architecture and AWS Serverless technologies: Lambda, EventBridge, SQS, DynamoDB.
  • Leads the team to design and build APIs (REST & GraphQL) that support world-class customer-facing features.
  • Has the toolkit to work on complex and unknown problems under pressure or at speed, including leading on business-critical incidents.
  • Delegates low-risk technical decisions that can be revisited if needed, and personally owns high-risk technical decisions that are harder to change.
  • Champions testable, maintainable, observable and scalable software, embedding CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code as first-class considerations across all delivery work.
  • Collaborates with the Product Owner, Scrum Master and Engineering Manager to continuously optimise both the efficiency and impact of team output.
• Culture
  • Creates an environment where engineers are empowered to own and deliver their work, breaking down knowledge and delivery silos and stepping back to let the team get things done.
  • Works with Engineering Managers to help engineers at all levels perform and grow through mentoring, learning opportunities and a coaching-first approach to development.
  • Fosters a culture of skill-sharing and accountability through excellent documentation, retrospectives and regular knowledge-sharing.
  • Delivers consistent, constructive feedback and actively seeks it from peers in equal measure.
• Leadership
  • Although this is an individual contributor role you will set and communicate a clear technical vision and architectural direction for the team, making pragmatic trade-offs to deliver iteratively against business objectives.
  • Is seen by others as an authority in their technical domain, using that expertise to coach and mentor on more ambiguous and challenging technical problems.
  • Influences technical strategy and cross-team ways of working through trust, sound judgement and clear communication by standardising code and practices across teams without relying on authority.
  • Actively builds peer relationships with other lead engineers by sharing knowledge openly, engaging honestly on technical challenges, and working collectively to raise the bar across the platform engineering teams.
  • Proposes and gets buy-in for projects that would help Gymshark achieve its goals, leading on longer-term technical improvements across quarters.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• Worked as part of a high-performing software engineering team in a lead or senior contributor capacity.
• Strong experience writing production code in Golang or another strictly typed language in a commercial engineering environment.
• Strong backend engineering background with hands-on experience implementing event-driven architectures.
• Experience designing, building and maintaining APIs, with a strong grasp of REST and GraphQL patterns.
• Strong understanding of high-quality code and architecture best practices, producing readable, maintainable and scalable software.
• Experience embedding quality and testing practices e.g. unit, contract and integration testing across the teams and services they've worked on.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code in a production environment.
• Database design experience across both relational and non-relational approaches.
• Demonstrable track record of coaching and developing engineers.
• Contributed to a team's delivery in an agile environment with a clear focus on shipping business value.
• Experience influencing technical direction without direct authority.
• Empowers and enables engineers to do their best work, rather than owning it for them.
• Role models leadership behaviours in communication, feedback, and how ambiguity is handled.
• Brings a pragmatic, get-things-done attitude alongside technical rigour.
• Gives and receives candid, constructive feedback openly and regularly.
• Reflects and upholds Gymshark values: One Team, Hard Work, Stay Humble, Community Service, in day-to-day actions and interactions, and actively role models them for the people around them.

LOCATION

Hybrid role, requires the successful candidate to attend at least 3 days a week in GSIQ, Solihull, UK.

EEO Statement

We are an equal opportunities employer, and we are committed to finding reasonable adjustments for candidates with specific needs or a disability during our recruitment process; all applicants will be considered fairly and equally. We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. If you would like to request a reasonable adjustment please email talent@gymshark.com.

BENEFITS

• Performance-based Bonus opportunity.
• Funded Healthcare benefit.
• 25 days holiday, additional day for your birthday & Bank Holidays.
• Contributory Employer pension scheme.
• Flexible benefits programme - including salary sacrifice EV scheme, dental insurance, cycle to work, tech scheme, holiday trading.
• Gymshark Employee Discount & long service awards.
• Access to High Street cashback and discounts.
• Financial, Physical and Mental Wellbeing Support.
• Enhanced Family Leave package.
• Life Assurance.
• Office location specific benefits (IQ).
• Gym Membership to The Lifting Club (LC).
• Onsite lunch provision & coffee bars.
• EV charge points available.

Note: The bonus program and benefits have certain eligibility requirements. Gymshark reserves the right to amend these programmes in whole or in part at any time without advance notice.