The Vacancy
The Engineering Lead is a hybrid leadership role that combines technical leadership, agile delivery ownership, and people management. This role is designed to lead a single autonomous engineering team, ensuring both delivery excellence and team development, while remaining technically hands-on. The Engineering Lead will be accountable for shaping technical direction, driving high-quality outcomes, and fostering a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.
About IRIS Software Group
IRIS Software Group is one of the UK's largest privately held software companies, providing mission-critical solutions that help organisations reduce admin, improve efficiency, and focus on what matters. For over 45 years, we\'ve grown from an accounting software provider to a global partner trusted by 100,000+ customers in 135 countries, including 50 of the Top 100 CPA firms in North America.
Our cloud-based accounting, HR, payroll, and education solutions are developed through our Centres of Excellence in India and Romania. Today, 1 in 6 UK employees are paid through IRIS payroll, we are the largest third-party online tax filer with HMRC, and our education software supports 12,000+ schools and 4 million families.
In 2024, we received multiple industry recognitions, including the Payroll Innovation Award (Global Payroll Association), Best EdTech Product (Global EdTech Awards), and Microsoft Security Partner of the Year. We are also proud to be consistently named a Great Place to Work, including Best Workplaces in Tech, Wellbeing, and for Women.
The Engineering Lead consolidates responsibilities previously held by the Agile Delivery Manager, Engineering Manager, and Lead Engineer. This role leads an autonomous engineering team, balances delivery ownership with hands-on technical contribution, and shapes technical direction, driving high-quality outcomes and continuous improvement.
Key Responsibilities
* Delivery Ownership (40%)
* Ensure timely, high-quality delivery of features and enhancements aligned with business goals.
* Drive predictability, velocity, and quality in delivery through agile practices.
* Provide clear and proactive stakeholder updates on delivery progress, risks, and blockers.
* Technical Leadership & Contribution (40%)
* Stay technically hands-on, contributing to code, reviews, and architecture decisions.
* Define and document technical decisions, patterns, and team ways-of-working.
* Improve product reliability, resilience, scalability, and technical debt management.
* Explore and adopt new engineering tools and practices to enhance delivery velocity, test coverage, and documentation.
* People Leadership (20%)
* Build and develop a high-functioning team with strong ownership and autonomy.
* Support career growth, succession planning, and personal development initiatives.
* Foster positive engagement, collaboration, and cross-functional partnerships.
Expected Outputs
* Lead exploration and application of AI tooling (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Cursor etc.) to improve engineering velocity and quality. Actively share experiences with partner teams.
* A high-performing, autonomous team with strong ownership and succession planning.
* Documented technical decisions, architecture patterns, and team processes.
* Quarterly OKRs/KPIs achieved or exceeded.
* Transparent communication with stakeholders on delivery status, risks, and dependencies.
Required Experience
* 8+ years in software engineering, with 2+ years in a team lead or technical leadership capacity - this may be on a formal or informal basis.
* Demonstrable experience delivering complex software projects using Agile methodologies.
* Proven technical skills in a relevant tech stack with recent hands-on contributions.
* Experience of working on highly scalable solutions, with internet facing traffic levels, deployed to the cloud.
* Strong understanding of software delivery lifecycle, CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps principles.
* Experience with observability, security, and production support practices.
* Excellent communication, collaboration and stakeholder management skills.
* Effective prioritisation and negotiation skills
* Demonstrable experience in the following technologies related to SAAS and best software development practices such as Microsoft .Net stack, Azure, C#, .NET Core, ReactJS, Blazor, Web API, Test-Driven Development (TDD), Microsoft SQL Server, Microservices (AKS), Azure Service Bus, AWS (Lambda, SQS/SNS, EC2, Fargate), and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes) technologies.
About IRIS
As one of the UK's largest privately held software companies, IRIS Software Group exists to simplify the lives of businesses, schools and organisations.
IRIS provides software solutions and services that substantially enhance operational compliance, efficiency and accuracy, empowering the users of our technology to look forward with certainty and confidence.
Over 4 million parents use our software to connect with their child\'s school, 18% of UK employees are paid via an IRIS payroll solution, 50,000 SMEs use IRIS cloud bookkeeping and 21,000 firms rely on us for legislative compliance.
Our operational software is the invisible but essential beating heart of our customers\' businesses, supporting them in a range of objectives, from maintaining legislative compliance to boosting engagement with stakeholders and enhancing productivity.
It\'s vital these mission-critical functions work first time, every time.
That\s why IRIS helps businesses run the tough stuff, stay compliant and get operational tasks done right first time, every time - so they can focus on productivity and growth.
IRIS is a company built on hiring the best people; our people are our greatest assets.
They enable us to be the innovative, market-leading, and high-performing company that we are today.
We\'re delighted to be certified as a Great Place to Work and one of the UK\'s Best Workplaces for Women.
These accolades confirm that our employees have a consistently positive experience at IRIS, with the certifications considering employee wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, trust in management, effective communication and recognition/reward.
IRIS is committed to engaging, rewarding and empowering our employees, and this is central to what we do.
This is why we work to create an environment where employees feel like they are part of a team.
Why work for IRIS?
The Benefits
* Generous holiday allowance
* Charity / volunteering days
* Income protection insurance
* Life assurance
* Employee Assistance Program
* Private healthcare
* Enhanced maternity pay
* Additional discount schemes
* Cycle to work scheme
Developing your career
We believe in creating a culture of engagement and reward to develop your potential and offer long-term career success. We do this by:
* Leading – Supporting our managers to be great leaders, providing inspirational management resources and offering dedicated management development training.
* Excelling – Rewarding individual excellence through dedicated initiatives and Employee Awards for demonstrating our values.
* Growing – Offering regular training and development programmes tailored to each employee\'s development needs and providing a commitment to a \'learning culture\' which shares knowledge, best practice and our long-standing expertise between employees.
* Listening – We\'re committed to a culture of continuous improvement and listen to our employees via regular feedback sessions and employee engagement surveys.
* Sharing – Our employees love the colleagues they work with. We promote a positive environment where our people feel comfortable, make friends and support each other.
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