Technical Lead

Role: Tech Lead

Location: Wilmslow / Remote (UK)

Role Purpose

As a Tech Lead at The Citation Group, you will:

Own the technical direction for your product area. Make architectural decisions. Write code daily alongside your team.

Set the standard for code quality, security, and engineering practice through hands-on example, not from the sidelines.

Mentor engineers through pairing, code review, and technical guidance – building capability at the code level.

Use AI/agentic coding assistants as part of your daily engineering workflow and help your team adopt them effectively.

Partner with your Engineering Manager on team health and delivery, focusing on the technical execution and cross-team coordination.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Architecture

• Make architectural decisions for your product area. Own the technical direction.
• Design and implement complex features hands-on. Write production code daily.
• Lead technical discussions and design sessions. Make the call when the team is stuck.
• Run technical spikes and proof-of-concepts. Validate approaches before full implementation.
• Balance technical excellence with delivery pragmatism. Know when to accrue technical debt and when to pay it down.
• Collaborate with architects and other Tech Leads on cross-cutting technical decisions.

Code Quality and Engineering Practice

• Lead by example: write clean, testable, secure code that others want to emulate.
• Drive TDD/BDD adoption through pairing and demonstration, not just advocacy.
• Own code review culture: provide constructive, educational feedback that raises the bar.
• Implement secure coding practices: threat modelling, security testing, dependency management.
• Build observability into your systems: instrumentation, logging, monitoring, alerting.
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines. Ensure fast, reliable builds and deployments.
• Manage technical debt at the code and system level. Refactor proactively.

AI and Agentic Coding Assistants

• Use AI coding assistants in your daily work: writing code, tests, documentation, debugging, reviewing.
• Demonstrate effective AI workflows to your team through real examples, not presentations.
• Help engineers learn prompt engineering, verification techniques, and when AI helps vs. hinders.
• Build AI-assisted workflows into your development process: generation → review → refinement.
• Identify technical opportunities for AI in your product: intelligent features, automation, content generation.
• Ensure AI-generated code meets security and quality standards before it ships.

Technical Mentorship

• Mentor through doing: pair programming, mob sessions, live code reviews.
• Grow engineers' technical capability: better design, cleaner code, stronger testing, deeper system thinking.
• Make yourself progressively less needed: build a team that can make good technical decisions without you.
• Create a safe environment for technical experimentation and learning from failures.
• Contribute to technical interviews and onboarding of new engineers.

Delivery

• Break down complex features into shippable increments. Deliver value continuously.
• Provide realistic technical estimates. Flag technical risks and dependencies early.
• Work with Product Owner on technical feasibility and implementation approach.
• Keep your Engineering Manager informed on technical blockers, risks, and progress.
• Participate in agile ceremonies: planning, refinement, stand-ups, reviews, retros.

Required Experience and Skills

Technical

• Significant senior engineering experience with a track record of technical leadership on complex systems.
• Deep expertise in at least one backend stack; ability to work across multiple languages and frameworks.
• Strong full-stack capability: backend, front-end, databases, cloud infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code.
• Practical knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure/AWS), containers (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Strong security fundamentals: OWASP, secure coding, threat modelling, security testing.
• Experience designing scalable, maintainable architectures and evolving legacy systems.

AI and Engineering Practice

• Daily user of AI coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor, Claude, etc.) with demonstrable productivity gains.
• Experience teaching others to use AI tools effectively: what works, what doesn't, common pitfalls.
• Strong practitioner of TDD/BDD, clean code principles, SOLID design, comprehensive automated testing.
• Experienced in pair/mob programming and high-quality code review practices.

Behavioural

• Technical credibility: engineers respect your judgment and look to you for technical direction.
• Clear technical communication: explain complex concepts to engineers, Product, and stakeholders.
• Pragmatic decision-making: balance competing priorities, make the call, move forward.
• Collaborative approach: work effectively with Product, Design, other Tech Leads, architects.
• Ownership mentality: take responsibility for technical outcomes and team success.
• Continuous learning: stay current with technology, experiment, share knowledge.

Nice to Have

• B2B SaaS or Citation domains: HR, Health & Safety, Compliance, Certification, eLearning.
• Experience integrating AI/ML services or LLM APIs into production systems.
• Contributions to open source or active participation in technical communities.
• Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues, reactive system