We're seeking a hands‑on Principal Developer Team Lead to drive the technical transformation of our Exam Technology Organisation as we migrate legacy enterprise applications to modern, cloud‑native architectures on AWS. You'll balance technical leadership with people management, leading a team of 4‑8 developers while establishing the foundations for our future technology stack.
1. Evolving our SRE function - Building the DevOps infrastructure, automation, and tooling that enables Site Reliability Engineering practices across development and operations teams.
2. Advancing our AI development practice - Establishing standards, frameworks, and best practices for responsibly integrating AI capabilities into our education platforms.
Technical Leadership
* Lead migration of legacy applications to cloud‑native AWS architectures
* Build DevOps automation to support SRE practices
* Establish AI/ML development standards and frameworks
* Set observability, monitoring, and incident response standards
* Promote best practices in web, event‑driven, and cloud‑native technologies
* Provide technical expertise and oversee code reviews
People Leadership
* Manage and mentor a team of 4‑8 developers, providing coaching, development plan
* Identifying training needs in AI/ML and SRE
* Support recruitment and foster a culture of continual improvement and wellbeing
Delivery & Collaboration
* Deliver software in agile squads
* Collaborate with architects, SREs, product owners, and infrastructure teams
* Liaise with stakeholders to identify education sector needs
* Plan and estimate migrations and feature delivery
* Coordinate with service management, security, and AWS experts
Essential experience
* Degree or equivalent
* Proven technical team leadership
* Skilled in two or more modern programming languages
* Experience with AWS cloud and infrastructure
* DevOps skills: automation, CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code
* Understanding of SRE and observability
* Experience in web‑apps and modern frameworks
* Strong communicator with technical and non‑technical audiences
Technical Expertise
* CI/CD pipelines, automation frameworks, and developer tooling
* Observability tools, monitoring, logging, and alerting systems
* Responsible AI practices and governance
* Event‑driven architecture and microservices patterns
* Software design patterns and scalability best practices
* Security principles in cloud environments
Leadership Qualities
* Ability to set technical standards and provide thought leadership
* Experience balancing people management with hands‑on contribution
* Strong mentoring and coaching skills
* Collaborative approach that builds trust across teams
* Passion for continuous learning in AI/ML and DevOps
* Promotes inclusion and continuous improvement
Benefits
* 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
* Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
* Discretionary annual bonus
* Group personal pension scheme
* Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
* Green travel schemes
We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world‑leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov.uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.
Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You'll belong to a collaborative team that explores new and better ways to serve students, teachers, and researchers across the globe – for the benefit of individuals, society, and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development, and progress in an environment that embraces difference, change, and aspiration. Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it's safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together.
We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity, and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background. We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background, and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.
We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world‑class, flexible rewards package featuring family‑friendly and planet‑friendly benefits.
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