Technical Lead

We are working with a London based company who are in the market for a Technical Lead with deep Rails experience.

Their core goal this year is to roughly double the volume of work the platform handles without doubling the size of the operations team. That means replacing manual, people-driven steps with better tooling, workflow automation, AI, and tighter integrations with the outside institutions the business depends on.

About the Role

The company needs a hands-on Tech Lead to take real ownership of the systems behind its core product.

This is first and foremost an IC position: most of your week goes into designing systems and writing and shipping production code yourself. The rest goes into helping the wider engineering team make sound technical calls, keeping the codebase healthy, and making sure the architecture keeps pace as the company grows.

You’ll partner closely with the CTO, Chief Product Officer, and a Senior Product Manager, translating business and customer problems into concrete technical plans and helping make sure those plans actually get delivered.

You’ll carry real weight in how the roadmap gets built, owning key systems personally, while also giving the rest of the team the direction and context to move fast without you being a bottleneck.

This role suits an experienced engineer who wants to stay hands-on in the code while still shaping technical direction, quality standards, and delivery across the team.

The Kind of Work Involved

AI-driven automation that pushes work through multi-step, partner-dependent processes with as little manual handling as possible

Internal tools used by operations staff to manage a high volume of active cases

Integrations with outside partners and institutions the product depends on

Infrastructure supporting regulated financial products where accuracy matters

Automation aimed at clearing operational bottlenecks in the core customer flow

Using AI to automate a currently manual workflow

Raising throughput via better workflow automation

Building internal platforms for teams managing large caseloads

Building dependable integrations with external institutions

Scaling the platform as demand grows

Keeping financial products handling real customer money correct and auditable

Improving observability and reliability platform-wide

Evolving the architecture without slowing product delivery down

Responsibilities

Ship the systems that matter: Design, build, and run the backend services underpinning the product. Production code is a weekly, hands-on commitment, and you'll personally own some of the most important pieces.

Look after the codebase: Keep an eye on its overall health and direction. Spot what needs fixing, make sensible calls on technical debt, and keep things easy to change as the business scales.

Drive delivery, technically: Work with the CTO and Senior Product Manager to turn business priorities into workable technical plans. Break big initiatives into shippable chunks, flag risks early, and keep the team aligned on how to execute.

Carry systems start to finish: From design through to running in production: data modelling, build, deployment, monitoring, reliability, performance, and iteration over time.

Guide the architecture: Steer architecture conversations and make grounded trade-offs between speed, simplicity, reliability, and long-term maintainability.

Turn manual work into automated workflows: Partner with product and operations to understand where processes are still manual, and build the systems that make them faster and more accurate.

Back up the rest of the team: Offer technical guidance through pairing, design review, and code review. Help others work through hard decisions and lift the bar on quality without slowing everyone down.

Push engineering standards forward: Improve how the team tests, documents, monitors, and operates what it builds.

What "Good" Looks Like After 6–12 Months

Designed and shipped systems that noticeably lift throughput

Delivered automation that cuts manual steps out of a core workflow

Own meaningful parts of the platform outright

Helped shape the technical approach on major initiatives with the CTO and Senior PM

Critical services are more reliable, better structured, and easier to observe than before

The team is making stronger architecture and implementation calls, partly because of you

You understand the codebase deeply and are trusted across engineering, product, and operations

The team is shipping complex work more predictably and with more confidence

What they are after

Solid track record building and running production backend systems

Experience leading complex projects technically while still writing code yourself

A history of taking systems from design through to full ownership in production

Strong Ruby on Rails experience, or an equivalent backend framework

Time spent on systems that are transactional, financial, or otherwise high-stakes to get wrong

Good grounding in data modelling, system design, and distributed systems basics

Real experience running services in production — monitoring, incidents, performance, reliability

Comfort turning a vague business problem into a concrete technical plan

Good judgement on when architecture is worth the investment and when simple is better

Strong communication across engineering, product, operations, and leadership

Bonus Points For

Building workflow automation systems

Applying AI to operational or customer-facing workflows

Building internal platforms or operational tooling

Working on ledgers, reconciliation, or audit-sensitive systems

Time spent in a fast-growing startup or scale-up

Stack

Ruby on Rails

AWS

OpenTelemetry

OpenAPI

Fundamentals, judgement, and system design ability matter more here than experience with any one specific technology.

Why This Role

The systems built here have a direct, tangible impact on customers' lives. This role comes with real influence over both what gets built and how, working closely with the CTO, product, operations, and the rest of engineering on problems that matter to the company's growth.

It's a chance to stay properly hands-on in the code while taking genuine ownership of a growing platform, an important roadmap, and the technical direction of the team around it.

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