Engineering Lead

Purpose of the job 

The Engineering Lead is accountable for the technical leadership, delivery effectiveness, engineering quality, people development and operational health of an Engineering Pod. The Engineering Lead translates approved architectural direction and Technical Design Documents (TDDs) into implementation-ready technical detail, collaborates with Business Analysts and Quality Assurance during technical story refinement, and ensures the pod can deliver secure, supportable and high-quality software in line with agreed engineering and architectural standards.

Key Responsibilties: 

Technical Design & Archiecture Translation 

• Review TDDs and architectural direction received from Architecture.
• Identify gaps, ambiguities, technical risks and dependencies before implementation.
• Expand the TDD with implementation-level detail required by the Engineering Pod.
• Define affected services/components, APIs, integrations/events, database/data impacts, configuration, security and deployment considerations.
• Resolve architectural questions with the responsible Architect and document material technical decisions.
•  Ensure significant development does not start without sufficient technical clarity.

Technical Srory Readiness

• Participate actively with BAs and QA in Technical Story Time/refinement.
• Provide technical input into stories, acceptance considerations, dependencies and non-functional requirements.
• Ensure stories are technically feasible, sufficiently decomposed and estimable.
• Own the technical elements of the Definition of Ready.
• Ensure Engineers can reasonably pick up an approved story and begin implementation without avoidable ambiguity. 

Delivery & Estimation

• Facilitate technically sound estimation with the engineers closest to the work.
• Challenge assumptions, dependencies and complexity where estimates are not sufficiently supported.
• Track delivery health, identify blockers early and escalate material risks.
• Drive predictable delivery against agreed commitments while avoiding quality shortcuts.
• Ensure required time logging and delivery administration are completed accurately.

Engineering Quality & Code Review

• Ensure an effective peer code-review process exists and agreed engineering standards are applied.
• Use Senior Engineers to review normal changes; personally engage on complex, high-risk or architecturally significant changes.
• Drive unit/integration testing, maintainability, security and appropriate technical documentation.
• Track and reduce recurring code-quality issues and technical debt.

QA & Realse Quality

• Treat Development and QA as one Engineering Pod with one delivery outcome.
• Partner with QA to ensure testability, regression impact and automation opportunities are considered early.
• Ensure release-readiness concerns are visible and resolved or explicitly accepted through the correct governance.
• Review UAT and production defect trends and drive corrective actions

People Leadership & Capability 

• Hold regular 1:1s and provide timely, constructive performance feedback.
• Coach and mentor Senior, Intermediate and Junior Engineers and support QA capability development.
• Maintain awareness of skills gaps, capacity, leave, succession and key-person dependencies.
• Create development opportunities and delegate decision-making appropriately.
• Participate in recruitment, interviewing, onboarding and performance management for the pod.

Operational Health 

• Ensure solutions are supportable, observable and operationally ready.
• Support effective incident resolution and ensure appropriate root-cause analysis is completed.
• Ensure recurring incidents and reliability risks are converted into corrective engineering work.
• Promote appropriate logging, monitoring, rollback/recovery and deployment readiness

Engineering Governance & Documentation 

• Maintain accurate technical documentation and contribute to the engineering knowledge base.
• Ensure the pod follows agreed engineering, security, SDLC, release and documentation standards.
• Identify and manage justified deviations through the appropriate governance process.
• Maintain visibility of technical debt, engineering risks and material dependencies.

Continuous Improvement 

• Identify opportunities to improve engineering process, tooling, automation and Engineering experience.
• Promote knowledge sharing and regular technical learning within the pod.
• Use delivery, quality and operational data to identify improvement opportunities.
• Share reusable improvements and lessons with other Engineering Leads and the Head of Engineering.

Core Skills/Competenices: 

Mandatory Skills/Abilities required for the job

• Software Engineering Principles
• Systems Design & Detailed Technical Design
• Architecture Interpretation and TDD Elaboration
• API,Integration and Event Driven Design
• Database and Data Design
• Cloud/Containerisation/Infrastructure Concepts
• CI/CD and DevOps Practices
• Testing Strategy and Quality Engineering
• Observability, Supportability and Production Support
• Secure Engineering Principles
• Technical Documentation and Decision Records
• Technical Estimation,Planning and Depencency Analysis

Minimum Requirements: 

• 5+ years' software development experience, with strong technical delivery experience.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, mentoring or team leadership experience.
• Strong understanding of the software development lifecycle and Agile delivery.
• Experience interpreting solution architecture and producing or expanding technical designs.
• Experience with technical estimation, story refinement and implementation planning.
• Experience leading code quality, testing, CI/CD and production support practices.
• Ability to lead developers and work closely with Senior QA/QA Engineers as one Engineering Pod.
• IT Diploma/Degree or equivalent practical experience is advantageous.
• Retail or relevant domain experience is advantageous.
• Proven track record of successful software implementation and continuous improvement.