Lead UI Engineer

At National Grid, we keep people connected and society moving. National Grid supplies us with the environment to make it happen. As we generate momentum in the energy transition for all, we don’t plan on leaving any of our customers in the dark.

National Grid is hiring a Lead UI Engineer for our Technology team. This role can be based at our Warwick, Bristol, or Cardiff offices, with hybrid working - and you’ll also have access to our London co‑working space if that location suits your working pattern. You’ll play a key role in designing and developing secure, scalable software solutions that support critical operations across our enterprise.

Step into a pivotal leadership position where you’ll shape the future of NGED’s digital experience. As our Lead UI Engineer, you’ll be the driving force behind creating intuitive, elegant, and user‑centred front‑end experiences across our digital platforms — experiences that millions of customers rely on. In this role, you won’t just guide UI development — you’ll define what great looks like. You’ll lead, coach, and inspire a talented team of UI Engineers, championing technical excellence and ensuring we deliver high‑quality, scalable solutions that truly meet user needs. You’ll be the person who clears blockers, solves complex problems, sets standards, and brings innovative thinking to life. Collaboration is at the heart of this role. You’ll partner closely with designers, engineers, product teams and technology leaders to ensure our UI approach is robust, maintainable, and aligned to outcomes that matter. You’ll foster a culture of continuous improvement, lean into Agile ways of working, and elevate engineering practice across the organisation. You’ll also act as a trusted deputy to the Head of UI when needed, supporting wider engineering initiatives and playing an active role in mentoring, knowledge sharing, and strengthening our broader software engineering community.

If you’re motivated by craftsmanship, leadership, and the chance to shape a best‑in‑class UI capability, this is a rare opportunity to make a genuine impact.

As our Lead UI Engineer, you’ll take a hands‑on leadership role in shaping how UI Engineering operates and delivers value across NGED. In this role, you will:

• Lead and inspire a high‑performing team of UI Engineers, fostering a culture of excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Set the technical direction for UI engineering, defining best practices, standards, and patterns that ensure scalable, maintainable, and high‑quality front‑end solutions.
• Oversee code quality and architecture, guiding teams through code reviews, tooling decisions, and implementation of a modern micro‑frontend strategy.
• Champion Agile delivery, removing blockers, coaching the team on Agile best practice, and ensuring smooth, predictable delivery across UI projects.
• Collaborate closely with designers, engineers and product teams to ensure UI solutions are user‑centred, accessible, and aligned with the wider technology strategy.
• Drive technical governance and risk awareness, ensuring UI solutions meet compliance, security, and engineering standards.
• Support recruitment, resource planning, and capability development, helping shape the future of the UI function.
• Deputise for the Head of UI when needed, contributing to key decisions and supporting wider engineering initiatives.

You’re an accomplished UI Engineering leader with deep technical expertise and a passion for delivering exceptional front‑end experiences at scale. You combine hands‑on mastery with strong decision‑making, stakeholder influence, and a coaching‑led leadership style. Here’s what you’ll bring:

• Expert front‑end engineering skills across HTML, CSS (and pre‑processors), JavaScript (ES6+), TypeScript, Angular, and modern tooling — with a strong grasp of scalable UI architectures.
• Multiple years of experience in a Lead Engineering role in a cloud or hybrid environment with people management, delivery and technical responsibilities.
• A quality‑first engineering mindset, experienced in unit, integration and end‑to‑end testing, and confident applying TDD/BDD to drive reliability and consistency.
• A proven track record delivering enterprise‑grade web applications that are secure, performant, responsive, accessible, and built for scale, monitoring, and high availability.
• Hands‑on experience with component‑driven and micro‑frontend architectures, supported by tools like Storybook or Figma to create reusable, maintainable UI systems.
• Strong engineering fundamentals, including Git branching strategies, CI/CD pipelines, feature toggling, and secure coding best practice.
• Solid experience integrating with backend services, REST APIs, cloud‑based analytics, experimentation tools and observability platforms.
• Excellent communication, collaboration and stakeholder‑management skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for any audience and guide teams through ambiguity.
• Demonstrated success leading high‑performing teams, mentoring engineers, and fostering a culture of growth, feedback and empowerment.
• Deep experience working in Agile environments, removing impediments, supporting iterative delivery and driving alignment across cross‑functional teams.

Competitive Salary: circa £75,000 – £90,000 per annum (based on capability, and experience) Annual performance incentive of up to 30% of your annual salary.

Additional benefits:

• A competitive contributory pension scheme where we will double match your contribution to a maximum company contribution of 12%.
• Flexible benefits such as a cycle scheme, share incentive plan, technology schemes.
• Access to apps such as digital GP service for round the clock access to GP video consultations and NHS repeat prescriptions, wellbeing app to support your health and fitness.
• Access to Work + Family Space, providing support and resources for work and family life, including paid emergency childcare and eldercare.

This role can be based at our Warwick, Bristol, or Cardiff offices, with hybrid working - and you’ll also have access to our London co‑working space if that location suits your working pattern. Every quarter, you’ll attend a 2–3 day in‑person planning event held at one of our office locations. This role is offered on a full time basis. This role closes on 28th July however we strongly encourage candidates to submit their application as early as possible.

Please note that in most cases, National Grid is unable to offer sponsorship for employment under the UK points-based immigration system. As such, applicants must have the legal right to work in the UK without requiring sponsorship now or in the future under the UK points-based immigration system. However, in exceptional circumstances where there is a clear and demonstrable need for specialist skills that cannot be sourced from the local labour market, National Grid may consider offering sponsorship. All applications are welcome from candidates who meet these requirements, regardless of race, nationality, or ethnic origin.

National Grid is an equal opportunity employer that values a broad diversity of talent, knowledge, experience and expertise. We foster a culture of inclusion that drives employee engagement to deliver superior performance to the communities we serve. National Grid is proud to be an affirmative action employer. We encourage minorities, women, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans to join the National Grid team.