Job Title: Principal Developer Team Lead
Salary: GBP 51,400 : GBP 68,800
Location: Cambridge/Hybrid
Contract: Permanent
This Principal Developer Team Lead position offers a pivotal opportunity to shape the technical future of a world:renowned academic organisation. Youll spearhead the migration of enterprise systems to cutting:edge cloud:native AWS architectures, while balancing hands:on technical leadership with people management responsibilities.
We are Cambridge University Press and Assessment, a world:leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.
About the role
Were 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.
Youll balance technical leadership with people management, leading a team of 4:8 developers while establishing the foundations for our future technology stack. Your initial focus will be on two strategic priorities:
Evolving our SRE function : Building the DevOps infrastructure, automation, and tooling that enables Site Reliability Engineering practices across development and operations teams Advancing our AI development practice : Establishing standards, frameworks, and best practices for responsibly integrating AI capabilities into our education platforms.
What Youll Do
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 and 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 About you
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 Youll be instrumental in our digital transformation, establishing the foundations for reliable, innovative systems that serve millions of learners, teachers, and researchers worldwide. By evolving our SRE function and advancing our AI practice, youll empower teams to deliver high:performance solutions while responsibly harnessing cutting:edge technologies.
If you would like to know more about this opportunity and what will make you successful, please see the full job description attached to the bottom of this vacancy on our