Lead Engineer in London

Shape engineering at the company. We’ve built a brand new Engineering Excellence function – a team focused on raising the bar across our entire engineering organisation. This isn’t a role where you own a single product or write code day-to-day. Instead, you’ll sit at the centre of engineering, product and platform, driving improvements in standards, tooling, frameworks and developer experience to help our teams deliver better, faster and more reliably. You’ll play a critical role in shaping how we use AI and internal tooling to unlock engineering productivity at scale.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead and develop a team of engineers, creating a culture of ownership, quality and continuous improvement
• Define and evolve engineering standards, frameworks and best practices across the entire engineering organisation
• Drive improvements in software quality, testing strategy, observability and release confidence
• Partner with engineering, platform, product and security to deliver large-scale, cross-functional improvements
• Shape and deliver internal tooling and AI‑assisted engineering workflows to improve how we build and run software
• Influence senior stakeholders and guide teams towards modern, scalable and resilient engineering practices
• Use data and insight to identify opportunities and prioritise where to focus

What makes this role different

• High influence, low ego – success comes from enabling others, not doing it all yourself
• AI‑first focus – you’ll help define how AI is used to improve engineering at the company
• Built from scratch – a rare opportunity to shape a brand‑new function

What we’re looking for

We’re open on background, but you’ll likely come from one of the following:

• You have a proven track record on leading teams with an engineering‑first mindset and influencing people with a broader organisational impact
• Previous experience on building enterprise level, highly scalable projects, focused on performance, observability and security best practices.
• Experience in a technology‑driven organisation with strong engineering standards

You’ll also bring:

• Strong experience improving engineering quality, reliability and operational maturity at scale
• A track record of influencing across engineering, product and platform teams
• Deep understanding of areas like CI/CD, observability, testing and resilience
• Experience leading teams and delivering cross‑org initiatives
• A pragmatic, outcome‑focused approach with strong stakeholder management

Nice to have

• Experience shaping developer experience platforms or internal tooling
• Exposure to cloud‑native environments (e.g. Azure) and modern architectures
• Experience in regulated or complex environments

Why the company

We’re serious about building a modern engineering organisation – one that’s cloud‑native, data‑driven and AI‑enabled. Engineering Excellence is central to that vision. If you’re motivated by raising standards, solving complex cross‑team challenges, and making a lasting impact at scale, this is your opportunity to do it. At the company, we value all types of diversity. We’re an equal opportunity employer and believe that our differences create a vibrant, authentic working culture. We want all our colleagues to feel able to bring their whole selves to work. We don’t discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics or identities. We make sure that every job is crafted to be inclusive and that people with disabilities or caring responsibilities can take part in the application and interview process. Tell us if you need accommodations: We’ll put reasonable adjustments in place to support you. We work with Textio to make our job design and hiring inclusive.