Development Lead in Birmingham

We’re seeking an experienced and hands‑on Lead Developer to head up the core development team within the LRQAs Cyber Digital Strategy programme. This role will lead a small but expert team responsible for building and integrating digital products that enable secure, scalable and intelligent cyber services including the LRQA Cyber Portal, SOC automation, AI Pen Testing and Attack Surface Management tools. You’ll combine deep technical expertise with practical leadership. Working directly with the Product Delivery Lead, Business Product Owner, Business Analyst and Solution Architects you’ll ensure that features and integrations are delivered to a high standard using modern engineering practices, strong coding discipline and secure development principles. The work spans both front‑end and back‑end systems. You’ll lead on the design and delivery of integrations, APIs and webhooks that connect our cyber services and client‑facing digital platforms while ensuring a consistent high‑performance user experience. Our stack includes Python for some services and React for front‑end interfaces with a focus on reusable, modular and secure components. The Lead Developer provides technical direction, hands‑on leadership and architectural oversight ensuring the team builds secure, scalable products that evolve sustainably. This is an opportunity for a developer who enjoys working at the intersection of technology, product and security, leading by example, driving engineering excellence and building modern digital services that power LRQA’s next chapter.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of four developers, fostering a culture of collaboration, curiosity and continuous improvement.
• Own technical delivery across the Cyber development workstreams, ensuring quality, performance and security in every release.
• Design and implement secure, scalable integrations and webhooks between internal systems and client‑facing platforms.
• Contribute hands‑on to development of core components and APIs and front‑end features built in React.
• Establish and maintain coding standards, peer reviews and best practices across the team.
• Partner closely with Solution Architects to ensure designs are technically sound, secure and aligned to enterprise standards.

Secure Development and Quality

• Champion secure coding principles across the team, embedding best practice into pipelines and peer reviews.
• Support the implementation of automated testing and static code analysis to maintain security and quality.
• Collaborate with Cyber SMEs to ensure alignment with security controls, identity management and data protection requirements.

Collaboration and Integration

• Work closely with Product Owners, BAs and Delivery Leads to translate requirements into technical designs and deliverables.
• Collaborate with architecture and security teams to shape the technical roadmap for the Cyber Portal and related services.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, data and DevOps teams to build and maintain reliable CI/CD pipelines.
• Support cross‑system integrations using APIs, webhooks and event‑driven architecture patterns.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation

• Stay current with emerging technologies and frameworks, identifying opportunities to improve performance, resilience and maintainability.
• Advocate for modern software development techniques such as containerisation, microservices and automated testing.
• Encourage experimentation, learning and knowledge‑sharing within the team.

About You

• Experienced full‑stack or backend developer with a track record of leading or mentoring teams.
• Experience in Python, NodeJS and proficiency in React with a strong understanding of integration patterns and secure API design.
• Deep understanding of webhooks, RESTful APIs and modern integration approaches.
• Passionate about secure coding practices and building resilient, compliant systems.
• Experienced with DevOps tools and pipelines (CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Docker, etc.).
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure or AWS) and containerisation technologies is desirable.
• Comfortable working in agile environments, delivering iteratively, managing trade‑offs and collaborating closely with product and design.
• Naturally curious, detail‑oriented and driven by solving complex technical challenges.
• Able to bridge communication between technical and non‑technical stakeholders.