The Opportunity
This is an opportunity to join IRIS Software Group as we transform into an AI‑first company delivering cloud‑native solutions that impact millions of lives globally. IRIS produces an integrated suite of mission‑critical software applications spanning accountancy, HR, payroll, education, and business operations. You will be working as part of an Agile team to deliver innovative solutions to user stories and requirements, contributing to our modernisation journey that serves over 100,000 customers across 135 countries.
Role Purpose
The Engineering Lead is a hybrid leadership role that combines technical leadership, agile delivery ownership, and people management. You will lead an autonomous engineering team building modern full‑stack web applications using the latest UI frameworks, .NET Core backends, and cloud‑native technologies, ensuring both delivery excellence and team development while remaining technically hands‑on with containerised, scalable solutions.
Key Responsibilities
* Delivery Management (25%)
Ensure projects are scoped, prioritised, and delivered on time with clear alignment to business goals and quarterly OKRs. Drive predictability, velocity, and quality through effective agile practices and continuous improvement. Communicate proactively with stakeholders (product, design, leadership, customers) on delivery progress, risks, and dependencies. Facilitate alignment between technical capabilities and business objectives through clear, strategic communication. Own team’s Agile maturity, establish team delivery standards, and optimise team practices for maximum effectiveness and predictability. Balance workload, staffing, and hiring needs to maintain sustainable delivery while planning for growth. Manage up and across the organisation to secure resources, remove impediments, and represent the team strategically.
* Technical Leadership & Contribution (50%)
Provide strategic technical leadership through architectural guidance and critical technical decisions, with selective hands‑on contributions. Define technical decisions and maintain system health through architectural oversight and technical debt management. Establish and drive comprehensive quality culture including TDD/BDD practices, testing standards, automated quality gates, and team code review excellence. Define team security standards, ensure compliance governance, and drive a security‑first culture within the engineering team. Stay technically current through code reviews, architectural discussions, strategic technical involvement and ensure alignment with broader organisational technical strategy. Delegate technical execution to senior team members while maintaining oversight and accountability. Define AI strategy and ensure responsible AI culture across teams. Empower team decision‑making within established frameworks and escalation criteria. Define team documentation strategy, establish governance frameworks, and ensure knowledge management within the engineering team.
* People Management (25%)
Line manage engineers including coaching, performance reviews, career planning, and regular 1:1s. Create inclusive, collaborative environment that enables team success by removing blockers and providing resources. Develop team members through structured career development, skill building, and succession planning. Handle performance management including improvement plans, conflict resolution, and team dynamics.
Required Experience & Skills
* Technical Skills
o Frontend Strategy: Strategic understanding of modern UI frameworks (Angular, React, Vue.js, Blazor).
o Backend Leadership: Strong understanding of .NET Core, C#, ASP.NET Core Web APIs, REST, application architectures, and distributed systems.
o Data Architecture: Strategic knowledge of SQL, NoSQL and data architecture decisions.
o Agentic AI Engineering: Demonstrated experience using AI coding agents (Cursor, Copilot, Devin, Claude Code, etc.) as a primary development workflow. Define team guardrails, review AI‑generated output critically, and lead a team culture where agentic development is default mode.
o Prompt engineering and AI workflow design: Experience designing effective AI interactions through prompt engineering, context management, and MCP integration.
o CI/CD Strategy: Define team CI/CD strategy, establish governance frameworks, and ensure adoption of deployment best practices across the team.
o Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, ARM Templates or AWS CloudFormation/CDK.
o Observability Strategy: DataDog, Application Insights or Amazon CloudWatch implementation with comprehensive observability strategy and cloud governance.
o Cloud Strategy: Strategic SaaS using Azure (Functions, Queue, Blob Storage, VMs, etc.) or AWS (Lambda, SQS/SNS, EC2, etc.) ecosystems.
o Container Orchestration: Advanced Container (Docker) and Kubernetes (AKS/EKS) with production‑scale deployments.
o Architecture Governance: Expertise in clean architecture, domain‑driven design, and application architectural patterns.
o Scalable Solutions: Experience with highly scalable solutions and internet‑facing traffic levels.
o Quality & Testing Leadership: Define team testing strategy, establish quality governance, and measure team adoption.
o Application Security: Confidence in vulnerability management, threat modelling and tracking.
o Production Support: Knowledge of observability and production support practices.
* Experience Requirements
o 8+ years in software engineering, minimum 1 year of formal people management experience OR 2+ years of technical leadership with mentoring responsibilities.
o Demonstrable experience delivering complex software projects using Agile methodologies.
o Proven recent technical skills with strategic contributions to production systems.
o Code review leadership with experience establishing review standards and culture.
o Demonstrated ability to balance technical excellence with business delivery requirements.
Leadership & Soft Skills
* Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
* Effective prioritisation and negotiation abilities.
* Strong analytical and strategic thinking capabilities.
* Ability to balance technical excellence with business delivery requirements.
* Fostering collaboration, promoting team building and culture development skills.
Desirable Skills
* Experience working with regulated or complex domains (finance, health, govtech) with audit requirements.
* Experience line managing engineers, including 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development.
* Experience with platform engineering or shared service teams building reusable UI components and backend services.
* Expertise with advanced monitoring and APM strategies using DataDog.
* Advanced understanding of modern UI architecture patterns (micro‑frontends, SSR/SSG).
* Experience as Engineering Lead, Tech Lead, or similar leadership role with full‑stack teams.
* Exposure to DevOps processes and automation ensuring end‑to‑end responsibility of features.
* Advanced cloud certifications in Azure or AWS.
Success Measures
* Delivery Excellence: Sprint goals achieved, predictable releases, strong velocity, minimal carry‑over.
* Technical Leadership: High team code quality, effective architecture decisions, reduced technical debt, improved scalability, proactive tooling adoption.
* Strategic Leadership: Selective technical contributions with effective delegation.
* AI Adoption: Team operating with agentic AI tooling embedded in daily workflow, measurable impact on delivery velocity and code quality.
* Quality Excellence: Team adoption of automated TDD/BDD and code review practices with effective quality gates and measurable quality improvements.
* People Development: Autonomous team with strong ownership, positive engagement scores, clear objectives, low attrition, active succession planning.
* Cross‑Functional Impact: Strong collaboration with Product, Design, and Platform teams, supported by positive stakeholder feedback.
* Business Alignment: Quarterly.
Benefits & Why Join IRIS
Competitive salary with leadership premium. Generous holiday allowance. Private medical healthcare. Life assurance. Pension (location dependent).
Professional Development: Executive leadership development programs. Conference speaking and industry thought leadership opportunities. Advanced technical and management training. Mentorship from senior engineering leadership. Opportunity to shape engineering culture and practices.
Culture & Environment: Great Place to Work certified. Best Workplaces for Women inclusive leadership focus. Autonomous team leadership with strategic impact. Flexible working arrangements and excellent work‑life balance. Opportunity to build and lead high‑performing engineering teams.
Additional benefits: Cycle to Work, charity days, discount schemes.
#J-18808-Ljbffr