Tech Lead - Backend (PHP/Symfony) in Manchester

About us

i6 provides the world’s most advanced end-to-end Aviation fuel management technology - enabling operational efficiency, transparency, and sustainability for airlines, fuel service providers, and suppliers. Our cloud-based solutions digitise the entire aviation fuel lifecycle through real-time fuel inventory and into-plane management platforms, patented electronic refuelling technology, and advanced fuel analytics and insights. With the adoption of our technology, our customers have been able to reduce thousands of tonnes of CO2 and benefited from millions in cost savings. i6 Group is a remote first company, however we have offices in Manchester and Surrey for occasional team collaboration sessions. We are only able to consider applicants based in the UK.

Your new role

In your new role as a Technical Lead at i6 Group, you will take ownership of technical delivery and drive engineering excellence across our products, leading and line-managing a team of software developers while working hands-on in the codebase yourself. You'll coach and mentor your team to high standards, championing a design-first culture and ensuring we ship quality software on time. Working closely with the Product function and fellow Technical Leads, you'll shape our architectural strategy, foster knowledge sharing, and drive a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.

What you will do

• Lead a team of 4-6 engineers; develop, maintain and review personal development plans ensuring that those plans align with the company’s strategy.
• Coach and mentor other team members into using a design-first way of working (API-first, TDD, BDD, DDD).
• Hands on development within the team, using our core tech stack (PHP / Symfony, MongoDB, Docker, Kubernetes, Cypress, Behat).
• Collaborate with other Technical Leads to ensure we have consistency and share knowledge.
• Participate fully in, and contribute to, Sprint planning, retrospectives, standups and other ceremonies in a constructive and can-do manner.
• Provide accurate estimates and complete tasks assigned within the timeframe specified, ensuring all affected parties are involved in the estimation process, ensuring quality in deliverables.
• Identify external dependencies of work items at the design stage so that they are considered before the build phase.
• Review requirements, specifications and technical design documents to provide timely and meaningful feedback.
• Take a leadership role in managing issues through to completion.
• Share & participate in the on-call rota and provide all necessary support during major incidents.
• Augment engineering capability by using appropriate AI coding tools.
• Collaborate across the business to understand business, commercial and technical/testing requirements.

Who you are

As a guide a Tech Lead at i6 would typically have 8-10+ years relevant experience. If you do not have this level of experience but do have the below skills we are still keen to hear from you.

• Strong knowledge and experience with our core programming languages and technologies: Critical: PHP, Symfony, MongoDB, Docker; Nice to have: Kubernetes, Behat, Cypress.
• Experience with MongoDB and NoSQL database design, including schema modeling, indexing strategies, aggregation pipelines, and performance optimization.
• Ability to foster a high performance culture developing the team to be world-class, and believes in empowering teams while also driving accountability.
• Solid understanding of OWASP Top 10 security issues and mitigation techniques.
• Strong technical leadership in SaaS, Cloud-based platforms, ideally with real-time, data-driven applications and event-driven architectures.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and delivery frameworks.
• Strong grasp of architecture, and an ability to lead architectural decision making.
• Solid understanding of engineering best practices: CI/CD, code reviews, test automation, observability, performance management, security; and a track record of implementing them.
• Experience with containerisation and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes, preferably in GCP or AWS environments.
• Deep understanding of event-driven design patterns and their application in scaling real-time, data-intensive SaaS platforms.
• Familiarity with message brokers and event streaming technologies and their operational trade-offs.
• Knowledge sharing mindset, creating and maintaining document repositories and ensuring seamless support for other business functions and stakeholders.
• Practical experience of embedding AI development tools into engineering processes with measurable results.

A bit more about us

We’ve recently raised our Series B funding. We are a remote first company with offices in Farnborough and Manchester. A number of our team are fully remote and some teams are primarily remote, typically meeting in the office once a month. We aim for all of the company to come together for a day once a quarter. Our benefits include: 25 days annual leave + your birthday day off, private healthcare and 5% pension contribution.