Technical Lead in Manchester

Location: Manchester | Hybrid (3-4 days on-site)

Contract: 10-Week Discovery Phase

Start date: Early August Start

Day rate: To be discussed on the call

The Opportunity

We are recruiting a hands-on Tech Lead for a 10-week discovery and phase-zero engagement in Manchester. The work sits at the intersection of legacy system analysis, technical consultancy, and future-state design for a property and facilities management client planning a significant technology transformation.

This role is not about managing a delivery team. It is about bringing real technical depth to a discovery process, getting under the bonnet of existing systems, and helping shape a credible, informed recommendation for the path forward.

The Project

The end client runs two legacy internal systems and has ambitious plans to scale significantly over the next few years. The discovery phase will map the current state in detail, evaluate four potential solution options including AI-native approaches, and produce a board-ready recommendation.

You will work as part of a small, focused team alongside a Solutions Architect, Business Analyst, industry specialist, and account lead. The work has real strategic weight; what this team produces will directly inform a major technology investment decision.

What We Are Looking For

Genuinely hands-on

You write code. You dig into systems. You are not a manager who used to be technical; you are technical and you bring that into every conversation. You can review legacy architecture, understand what is actually happening under the hood, and validate technical direction with real authority.

The current environment includes Azure. While the solution direction remains open and this is not a role that locks you to a specific stack, you should be comfortable reasoning about Azure services, infrastructure patterns, and what migration or augmentation might look like in that environment.

Language agnostic and pragmatic

This is a discovery phase. The right answer for the future state has not yet been decided, and that is partly what you are here to help determine. You should be comfortable reasoning across languages and frameworks, evaluating options without bias, and recommending what fits the problem rather than what you know best.

Consultative, not just technical

You ask the right questions. You can sit in a room with stakeholders, understand what they are actually trying to achieve, and translate that back into technical options and trade-offs. You are confident in communicating your thinking clearly, even to non-technical audiences.

Discovery and evaluation experience

You have been involved in transformation projects where the brief was not fully defined from day one. You are comfortable in the early stages of a project, building understanding, documenting findings, and shaping direction alongside architects and analysts.

The Role in Brief

• Dive into the existing legacy systems to understand the current technical landscape
• Work alongside the Solutions Architect and BA to evaluate solution options and validate technical feasibility
• Contribute to the production of technically grounded discovery outputs and recommendations
• Bring modern engineering thinking to the conversation, including awareness of AI tooling, automation, and contemporary platform options
• Operate as a credible, senior technical voice within the team and in client-facing settings where appropriate

Location and Logistics

Manchester-based. Work takes place across two Manchester locations: a client site in Central Manchester near Piccadilly and a consulting office in the Northern Quarter. Hybrid working with an expectation of 3-4 days on-site per week. Some remote flexibility applies.

The engagement is a 10-week phase with a hard stop and fixed deliverables. A successful discovery phase is likely to lead into a longer implementation engagement of 6 months or more.

About You

• Strong hands-on development background with recent, active technical work
• Azure familiarity, including comfort reasoning about cloud services, infrastructure, and migration patterns
• Language and framework agnostic mindset, with breadth across modern development approaches
• Experience working in consultancy, professional services, or client-facing technical roles
• Comfortable contributing to discovery and scoping engagements, not just execution phases
• Good communication skills and the confidence to present technical thinking clearly
• Awareness of AI tooling, automation, and how modern engineering teams are approaching these areas

At Inara Talent, we believe everyone deserves a fair chance to shine. We connect great people from all backgrounds with opportunities where they can thrive making sure hiring is fair, inclusive, and genuinely diverse. No matter your background, we focus on what matters: your talent.