Engineering Team Lead in Chichester

Your Mission

The Engineering Team Lead is responsible for the day-to-day leadership and delivery for a small engineering team, typically 3-6 engineers. This role exists to ensure that work is planned sensibly, delivered to a high standard, and carried out by a healthy, supported team. The Team Lead is both a people leader and a hands-on engineer, spending the majority of their time contributing directly to the codebase while providing clear direction and support to their team.

While the nature of the work may differ between teams (feature development or issue resolution), the expectations of the role remain the same: clear ownership, steady delivery, and strong engineering practice.

What You'll Bring To The Role

Scope and context: Engineering Team Leads operate within feature-aligned product teams or within a support/ops-aligned engineering team. Product-aligned teams focus on delivering new functionality agreed with Product. The support/ops-aligned team focuses on resolving escalated product issues and improving system behaviour, but does not operate as a customer support function. All Team Leads work within the company’s existing technical direction, quality practices, and operational constraints, and collaborate closely with Product, QA, and other engineering teams as appropriate.

Key Responsibilities

• Delivery and execution
  • Plan and deliver work with the team in line with agreed priorities
  • Break down work into achievable increments and ensure progress is visible
  • Balance short-term delivery with maintainable, well-tested solutions
  • Raise risks and blockers early and work with peers and managers to resolve them
• People leadership
  • Line manage engineers within the team, providing regular feedback and support
  • Create a safe, constructive environment for learning and improvement
  • Support engineers’ growth in collaboration with the Director of Engineering or Technical Operations
  • Handle day-to-day people matters calmly and fairly
• Hands-on engineering
  • Contribute directly to the codebase as a senior member of the team
  • Lead by example in code quality, testing, and technical decision-making
  • Participate in design discussions and code reviews
  • Help unblock technical issues without becoming a bottleneck
• Collaboration and ways of working
  • Work closely with Product (for product teams) or Support and Technical Operations (for the support/ops team) to ensure shared understanding of priorities
  • Collaborate with QA to ensure work is testable, tested appropriately, and delivered with confidence
  • Engage with the Principal Engineer where architectural guidance or technical alignment is needed
  • Encourage pragmatic, lightweight processes that support delivery rather than slow it down

What this role is not

• This is not an architecture ownership role (that sits with the Principal Engineer)
• This is not a QA ownership role (quality strategy and coverage sit with the QA team)
• This is not a support agent role, even in the support/ops-aligned team
• This is not a full-time management position

The Engineering Team Lead succeeds by enabling the team and contributing directly, not by coordinating from the sidelines.

Experience and capabilities

We’re looking for someone who brings most of the following:

• Strong experience as a software engineer in a production SaaS environment
• Experience leading or mentoring other engineers
• Confidence balancing hands-on development with people and delivery responsibilities
• Ability to plan work realistically and adapt when priorities change
• Comfort working within established architectural direction and engineering standards
• Clear, respectful communication, especially when things are under pressure

Personal qualities

• Pragmatic and delivery-focused
• Calm and supportive as a people leader
• Comfortable switching between code and coordination
• Open to feedback and continuous improvement
• Respected by peers through competence and fairness

Why this role matters

Engineering Team Leads are the keystone between strategy and execution. Done well, this role:

• Keeps teams focused and moving forward
• Reduces friction and confusion day-to-day
• Supports engineers to do their best work
• Helps the organisation deliver consistently without burning people out

About us

As the global leader in the eCommerce automation sector, Linnworks has one mission: Giving our clients back their time to grow and lead their brands. Companies wanting to sell their products via marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, etc need a platform to automate and monitor retail, inventory and shipping processes and performance. We have teams across North America and Europe, and we are backed by Marlin Equity Partners, a leading growth equity firm headquartered out of California. Linnworks not only has the market-leading product for e-commerce automation but also attracts the best people in the industry. Highly skilled, passionate, and collaborative with a winning and customer-centric attitude - we pride ourselves on our people.

Life at Linnworks: Linnworks is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer (EoE). We believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and background leads to a better environment for our employees and better service for our customers. We value the training and development of our employees deeply. We are committed to continuous investment in their personal growth, providing clear paths for career progression, and equipping them with the tools and training required to become experts in their profession.