Technical Team Lead, Contract in London

Who Are We? Xcelirate develops technologically-advanced platforms which are accessed by thousands of users every minute! We are proud to offer a workplace where the sharpest developers come together to strategically plan and swiftly execute practices which see us maintain our existing market dominance and attain global expansion. We owe our success to our customers who have seen us grow across a decade, and our talented team who have made that growth possible!

What are we looking for? You are a principal-level engineer first. The tech lead title is almost incidental. It just means you are the person the team orbits around, because that is what happens naturally when you are the one who understands the system most deeply and keeps the clearest head under pressure. The 10% that is people management fits inside your engineering work, not alongside it. You hire, you steer, you unblock, but you do it the way a strong engineer does everything: with good judgment, minimal ceremony, and no interest in making it a bigger deal than it is. You are still, genuinely, happiest close to the code and driving projects forward. You are also more than happy to take ownership over driving them forward.

Programming languages do not impress you. You have used enough of them to treat them as what they are: different syntaxes for expressing the same fundamental ideas, some more suited to the problem than others, none worth being religious about. You have written things in languages that no longer exist, maintained systems built on frameworks that peaked at a conference talk in 2013, and learned the hard way that novelty and progress are not the same thing. When you join a new codebase, you go quiet and start reading. You find the abstractions that are holding up weight, identify the ones that are just decorative, and build a mental model of the whole thing before you touch anything. Then you make one small, careful change, and the way it lands tells you everything you did not yet know.

You have strong, well-earned instincts around performance. Hot-path optimisation, speculative execution, lazy initialisation: these feel obvious to you, and you have mostly stopped being surprised when they do not feel obvious to others. You know where latency actually hides, and it is rarely where the team thinks it is. You profile before you optimise, but you usually already know what you are going to find. Your system design is not flashy. It is load-bearing. You have seen enough over-engineered architectures to have a near-allergic reaction to complexity that is not earning its keep. When you design something, it is because you have thought about what it needs to do in two years, not just the next sprint.

Once you have got your footing in the project, you will build the team around it. You know how to hire for this kind of work. You are looking for engineers with genuine curiosity, sound instincts, and the humility to learn a system before trying to improve it. You will form a team that can own hard problems. Getting that right is important to you, but it is not where you live. Where you live is in the work itself. In a well-reasoned commit. In a system that behaves exactly as it should at 3am when nobody is watching. In the quiet satisfaction of a codebase that is a little more honest than it was before you touched it. The homelab is always running something. You will tell us about it if we ask, and we are asking. If this reads less like a job description and more like a description of you, good. That is what we were going for.

What will you be doing?

• Manage your own and your team’s time while adhering to priorities set by the company.
• Own complex engineering problems end-to-end, from problem framing and design through to delivery and iteration.
• Take responsibility for critical areas of the platform, ensuring they remain reliable, performant, and maintainable.
• Build new features and improve existing ones across our platforms. Refactor legacy and modern codebases pragmatically, balancing long-term health with delivery needs.
• Write tests (unit, integration, and end-to-end) to ensure software reliability. Be involved in every phase of the software lifecycle, from ideation to deployment.
• Participate in (and at times lead) deep technical discussions, helping drive sound decisions and trade-offs.
• Work hands-on across backend and frontend systems, stepping in wherever the problem lives.
• Identify inefficiencies and help streamline workflows, reducing unnecessary work.
• Collaborate closely with other senior engineers, raising the bar through example rather than authority.
• Take ownership of your work, ensuring high-quality results and maintainable solutions.

What will you bring along?

• 15+ years hands-on experience building and maintaining complex web applications.
• Have been directly responsible for development and successful (or not so successful) release of multiple major projects from their inception to production and subsequent operation.
• In your portfolio there are multiple projects that you have worked on for more than 2.5 years.
• Clear technical communication; able to explain and defend design decisions to senior engineers and non-engineers alike.
• Expert PHP developer (12+ years); Symfony or equivalent frameworks.
• 10+ years modern JavaScript; React or Vue (Next/Nuxt a plus).
• Expert level knowledge in at least one more programming language (Python a plus).
• Full-stack architecture expertise: monoliths, services, and hybrids.
• Power user cloud deployment and scaling (AWS preferred) experience and abilities.
• Expert Linux user; including daily containerized workflows with Docker.
• Expert in infrastructure automation: Terraform, Ansible.
• Power user level CI/CD pipeline and release workflow ownership.
• Experience in automated testing: unit, integration, E2E; TDD where appropriate.
• Expert level knowledge in and around web security fundamentals: auth, authorization, data protection, secure coding.
• Legacy + modern codebase fluency; ability to work on incremental modernization.
• Strong independent technical ownership and accountability.

We are always looking for the best candidates, so if you think you would be a good fit even if you do not meet 100% of the requirements, we would love to hear from you!

How We Support Our Contractors

• An annualised rate of €145,000 + retention bonus scheme: Competitive contractor rate with a generous bonus paid every 6 months based on your time with us.
• Top-Notch Workstation: We provide a MacBook or Dell, branded merchandise, and everything you need for an optimal work environment.
• Global Co-Working Access: Work from a global network of co-working spaces to keep your work-life dynamic and flexible.
• Flexibility: Enjoy full flexibility in work location and hours, supporting a work-life balance tailored to your needs.
• Events and Gatherings: Participate in exciting events throughout the year, including team gatherings, cultural events, and other fun activities.