Technology Lead

Technical Lead – Software Engineering, Architecture & IaC

Location: London Luton Airport – hybrid, 2–3 days per week on site

Salary: Competitive

Type: Permanent

The opportunity

I'm working with a major UK aviation organisation looking for a highly capable Tech Lead to take ownership of the technical direction and delivery of its next generation of data and operational intelligence products.

This is a genuinely hands-on engineering leadership role. You'll have the autonomy to shape architecture, make critical technical decisions and build production-ready software, taking ideas from initial discovery and proof of concept through to reliable, scalable deployment.

We're looking for an exceptional software developer who combines deep coding ability with strong architectural judgement. Someone who can independently turn ambiguous business problems into well-engineered solutions, make sound decisions without needing constant technical direction, and take ownership of the quality of their code and infrastructure.

What you'll be doing

• Own end-to-end technical architecture, making and defending decisions around system design, technology selection, scalability, security, performance and maintainability.
• Design, write and maintain Infrastructure as Code, automating the provisioning and management of cloud infrastructure. Pulumi is preferred, but strong production experience with Terraform, AWS CDK, Bicep or equivalent is relevant.
• Remain hands-on with software development, building robust applications, APIs, integrations and data-intensive systems using modern engineering practices.
• Take AI/ML and data-driven concepts from experimentation through to production, ensuring solutions are reliable, maintainable and fit for operational use.
• Design integrations and data flows across cloud services, enterprise systems and operational platforms, including real-time and event-driven architectures.
• Own delivery quality, including testing, CI/CD, observability, security and deployment readiness.
• Lead technical discovery, challenge assumptions, evaluate alternatives and make pragmatic decisions balancing speed, risk, cost and long-term value.
• Work directly with operational, commercial, product and data science stakeholders, translating complex requirements into effective technical solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring, establishing strong engineering standards and helping the wider team improve.

What we're looking for

Infrastructure as Code is essential. You must be able to demonstrate hands-on experience writing and maintaining IaC, ideally in production environments. Simply using cloud services or working alongside a DevOps team is not sufficient.

You'll also bring:

• A strong background as a hands-on software engineer, with substantial experience building and shipping production applications.
• Proven ability to own architectural decisions independently, explain trade-offs and take responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.
• Excellent coding ability, with a strong focus on correctness, maintainability, testing, performance and security.
• Experience across a meaningful subset of TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Azure/AWS, React, Next.js, APIs and CI/CD.
• Experience designing and delivering integrations, data pipelines or event-driven systems.
• Exposure to production AI/ML systems, model integrations or data-intensive applications.
• The judgement to work autonomously, solve unfamiliar problems and deliver high-quality solutions without relying on constant oversight or AI-generated code.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.