Lead Software Engineer in Surrey

hackajob is collaborating with Redgate Software to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role. Redgate creates simple software to help data professionals get the most value out of any database. Our solutions solve complex database management challenges across the DevOps lifecycle, making life easier for IT leaders, development, and operations teams by increasing efficiency, reducing errors, and protecting business-critical data. The data community trusts Redgate to balance speed to market, team collaboration, and data protection.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you'll be part of a small, cross-functional team that typically includes a Tech Lead, Product Designer, Product Manager, and 4–5 software engineers. You will be hands-on, shaping the approach the team takes to solving the most complex engineering tasks. You will be responsible for the quality of engineering practices within the team and developing the skills of team members to support this. You will lead cross-team engineering initiatives and work with your architect to inform technical strategy.

Your work at Redgate includes:

• Working closely with the Tech Lead and wider team to translate business strategy into implementation.
• Being accountable for the quality of software design for the product team in which you are assigned, balancing technical debt against speed of delivery.
• Sharing technical decisions within the solution group, division and team.
• Leading significant pieces of work including clarifying requirements, facilitating meetings, breaking tasks down and checking-in with other team members.
• Writing and maintaining high quality software.
• Growing the skills of other software engineers to take engineering to the next level.
• Establishing strong engineering practice and working to deliver the technical strategy.
• Regularly contributing to internal Level Up events to support growing and developing skills within the division.
• Understanding how the product or systems owned by your team solve customer problems and add value, prioritising engineering work based on its potential to provide value to customers.

Who you are:

• You’re an expert in modern .NET/ C#.
• You can design and build world-class scalable, resilient, and secure systems, considering trade-offs and future implications.
• You have a bias for simplicity and maintainability in the code you write and the products you build.
• You have evidence of leading complex pieces of work, including leading the collaboration with other teams.
• You are an excellent communicator, being able to distil complex technical decisions into clear rationale.
• You’re enthusiastic about engaging with customers as necessary to create a great product.
• You are driven by continuous improvement and foster a growth mindset within the team.
• You have evidence of supporting the professional development of other engineers through coaching, mentoring and role modelling.

Desirable skills:

• Experience in some or all of the following areas would be an advantage: Cloud infrastructure (especially AWS), infrastructure as code, and service management.
• Prompt engineering.
• Experience building AI applications/features and iterating based on user feedback.
• Agentic application frameworks e.g. Semantic Kernel, Langchain, Langraph, Strands agents etc.
• Agentic coding best practices: Spec driven development.
• Implementing supporting knowledge bases, e.g. opening access to searchable third-party codebases.
• Implementing AI feedback loops, e.g. custom tests, linter, compilation etc.
• Experience with different AI coding tools e.g. Cursor, VSCode agents, Claude code, Codex etc.
• Experience developing servers and clients.
• Experience consuming existing servers and clients e.g. Claude desktop, cursor, etc.
• AI feedback loops, agent observability and evaluation.
• Experience with semantic search and vector databases.
• Front-end development with Typescript, React and/or Material UI.

Salary: Circa £70k to £85k subject to experience.

Why join us?

At Redgate, we believe supporting and empowering our people is key to our success. We create an environment where you can thrive in your career and enjoy every moment of your journey with us. Benefits include competitive salary, comprehensive health coverage, monthly wellbeing allowance, flexible working arrangements, generous paid time off, employee assistance program, community and social events.

Redgate has adopted a flexible-hybrid model. This means that people will work flexibly with a blend of remote (home) and co-located (office) work, with teams having the flexibility to decide which location best suits the outcomes they need to deliver.

Our diversity, equity, inclusion belonging commitments:

• We believe diverse teams are better at solving problems and fostering a creative culture.
• We aim to offer a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging and can thrive.
• Recruitment retention: hiring and retaining diverse talent.
• Authenticity belonging: promoting inclusive language and behaviours.
• Growth: supporting personal and professional development.

Redgate is an equal opportunity employer, welcoming applications from all backgrounds. If you need accommodation, please let us know via our application process or email.