Overview
* Start date:
ASAP
* Location:
London HQ; 3 days/week in the office (hybrid)
* Reporting to:
Director of Engineering
* Visa sponsorship:
UK national or visa holder preferred, but not a dealbreaker.
* Background checks:
Due to the nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees need to pass background checks, verifying your identity, education (if relevant), work history, sanctions, criminal record, adverse financial history and right to work.
* Salary expectations:
We aim for transparency on salary bands. If our range is misaligned with your expectations, we'd welcome an open conversation as early as possible.
Overview
Apolitical builds a modern, TypeScript-first platform + React on the frontend; NestJS services on the backend) deployed via GitHub Actions to GKE supported by shared libs, observability, and a mono-repo workflow.
We operate vertical, outcome-focused product squads complemented by horizontal platform/data enablers as we scale.
We're hiring a Tech Lead to own the technical output of a squad (3–5 engineers), line-manage 2–3 mids/seniors, and collaborate with peers on cross-squad architecture through our lightweight architecture/forum rhythms.
Role
You will be accountable for squad outcomes (delivery, quality, operability) and for the technical designs within your squad's vertical (product) or horizontal (platform) remit. You'll also share responsibility with other Tech Leads/Staff Engineers for larger cross-squad designs and standards via the architecture forum.
Time allocation:
* ~25% squad leadership & delivery operations
* ~15% line management
* ~60% hands-on IC/design
You'll partner closely with the squad PM to ensure all work is ticketed, estimated, and lifecycle-tracked on a Kanban-style board; Tech Leads define their squad's ceremonies/cadence provided the ticketing hygiene standard is met.
Remit
Technical leadership & design
* Drive system design, sequencing and risk burn-down; author and review RFCs as the default medium for proposing, discussing and recording technical decisions (iterated with Staff/Tech Leads).
* Keep designs aligned with our foundations and shared libraries. Contribute code regularly (full-stack), perform high-leverage reviews, and raise the engineering bar via standards and examples.
Delivery & ways of working
* Own the squad's flow of work: ensure backlog is shaped with the PM, tickets are estimated, WIP is limited, and the Kanban board reflects reality.
* Use monthly performance reports from the Director to spot constraints (throughput, cycle time, quality) and run improvement experiments.
Cross-squad architecture & standards
* Collaborate in the architecture forum/guild with other Tech Leads/Staff to set patterns and shared services; co-own cross-squad initiatives.
* Create/maintain reference implementations and internal docs that scale to multiple squads.
People leadership (2–3 direct reports)
* Run growth plans, feedback and performance reviews; coach engineers on design, testing, and delivery habits.
* Support recruiting, onboarding and mentorship pairings.
Operational quality
Ensure logging, metrics and traces are in place for your domain; partner with Platform/DevOps where needed.
Role expectations (Typical milestones)
Within 30 days
* Ship your first meaningful PR; baseline the squad board; publish a "Ways of Working" doc; open your first
RFC
for a scoped improvement.
Within 90 days
* Land a squad-owned feature with measurable impact and clean ops; reduce mean cycle time and WIP overages; contribute to a cross-squad design via RFC/architecture forum.
Within 180 days
* Deliver a cross-squad technical initiative (e.g., shared module or service) with clear adoption; demonstrate sustained improvements in predictability and quality.
About you
Must have
* Proven technical leadership in a product or platform squad (guiding 3–5 engineers), plus line management for 2–3 engineers.
* Strong full-stack TypeScript skills + NestJS) and pragmatic systems design.
* Comfortable owning delivery hygiene: backlog shaping, estimation, Kanban discipline, and flow metrics.
* Excellent written communication—especially authoring and iterating RFCs—and stakeholder alignment with PM/Design.
* Comfortable with hybrid working; available in our London office 3 days/week for collaboration with squads and stakeholders.
Nice to have
* gAI/LLM enablement: practical experience leveraging LLMs to optimise team operations (e.g., PR review assistants, flaky-test triage, on-call/copilot run-books, summarising RFC discussions, internal Q&A over code/docs, backlog grooming aides, Slack bots wired to CI).
* Exposure to platform/dev-tools or data/ML enabling patterns that support multiple squads.
You'll thrive here if you
* Balance delivery speed with quality and maintainability; prefer incremental change over rewrites.
* Enjoy collaborating in a strong vertical squads + enabling teams model.
You won't be
* A pure people manager—this is a player/coach role with ~60% hands-on engineering/design.
* Locked into a rigid ceremony schedule—the
cadence is yours to set
so long as work is properly ticketed and traceable.
Don't meet every single expectation? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. Apolitical is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Application Process
Apolitical uses Applied in our recruitment. Applied aims to overcome unconscious bias in recruiting. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test skills needed for the role. The answers are then anonymised, and reviewed in a random order by members of our team.
The Applied platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application. These answers are never visible to the hiring team and don't affect your application in any way. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.