Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer | up to £90,000 base + benefits | Manchester City Centre | Hybrid, 2 days a week

Do you want to be a lead whilst remaining hands-on and nerding out over hard challenges?

You’ll lead and mentor a small full-stack team of 2–3 engineers, working together to solve problems, nerd out over technical decisions and build products used across media, broadcasting and entertainment.

You’ll stay properly hands-on, working mainly across:

• Node.js / TypeScript
• AWS
• APIs
• Real-time applications

The key is being a strong, backend-leaning engineer with Node.js who has experience leading and mentoring other engineers. You don’t need to tick every box in the wider stack. I’ve included it to give you visibility of the environment you’ll be working in.

They’re big on AI-assisted development, using AI as a pair programmer and working with agentic tools, but they don’t blindly rely on the code it produces. Their view is that AI can speed up good engineering just as quickly as it can speed up bad engineering, so strong software engineering fundamentals and knowing why you’re building something a certain way really matter.

This isn’t a hands-off management role. You’ll have real ownership over architecture, technical decisions and delivery, while still coding and helping the engineers around you get better.

It’s two days a week in the Manchester City Centre office, around a 10-minute walk from Piccadilly, with the rest of the week working from home. Flexi working hours too so you can avoid traffic.

They’re ideally looking for someone who can start next month, with a straightforward two-stage interview process.

Up to £90,000 + benefits.