Technical Lead

Technical Lead Full Stack Developer

- Southampton, Hampshire - Office-based onsite
- Technical Lead / AI
- Circa £70k - £80k plus benefits

We're looking for an experienced, hands-on Technical Lead Full Stack Developer to lead a team of forward-thinking, AI-first software engineers.

This is an opportunity for someone who is genuinely comfortable working across the entire technology stack, from frontend and backend development through to infrastructure, cloud and data, while providing the technical direction and leadership needed to deliver high-quality software.

You'll lead a team that treats AI as an integral part of how software is designed, built, tested and delivered, rather than simply an occasional productivity tool.

This isn't a traditional management position. You'll remain close to the code, lead by example and take ownership of technical delivery, while mentoring engineers, influencing architectural decisions and helping establish an AI-first engineering culture.

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Technical Leadership & Team Development

• Provide hands-on technical leadership to a team of full stack engineers, setting technical direction and driving engineering best practices.
• Lead, mentor and support engineers, encouraging technical growth, collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Foster an AI-first engineering mindset where developers actively explore and adopt AI-assisted approaches to solving technical challenges.
• Take ownership of technical delivery, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable and delivered to a high standard.
• Guide architectural and design decisions across frontend, backend, cloud infrastructure and data.
• Support engineers in breaking down complex technical challenges, evaluating alternative solutions and making pragmatic decisions.
• Lead technical discussions, code reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions.
• Work closely with product and engineering stakeholders to translate business requirements into effective technical solutions.
• Balance hands-on development with team leadership, ensuring you remain actively involved in building and delivering software.

AI-First Engineering & Development Practices

• Champion the adoption of AI-assisted software development across the engineering team.
• Establish and continuously improve AI-first development workflows that enhance productivity, quality and delivery speed.
• Lead by example through extensive practical use of AI development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Aider or similar.
• Encourage engineers to use AI throughout the software development lifecycle, including solution design, code generation, refactoring, testing, debugging, documentation and code reviews.
• Explore opportunities to automate repetitive engineering activities and reduce unnecessary manual development effort.
• Evaluate emerging AI tools, agentic coding capabilities and development methodologies, identifying where they can deliver genuine value.
• Establish appropriate engineering standards and quality controls for AI-generated code, ensuring security, reliability and maintainability are not compromised.
• Share knowledge and coach engineers on effective prompting, context management and the responsible use of AI development tools.
• Help define what effective AI-first software engineering looks like, continually adapting team practices as the technology evolves.

Hands-On Full Stack Development

• Design, develop and maintain software features end-to-end, from user interfaces and APIs through to databases, infrastructure and deployment.
• Work across different technologies and codebases, selecting appropriate solutions based on technical and business requirements.
• Contribute to system architecture, technical design and engineering standards.
• Develop robust, maintainable and well-tested production code, using AI tooling where it adds demonstrable value.
• Identify and resolve complex technical challenges across the application stack.
• Support continuous integration, automated testing and deployment processes.
• Consider performance, security, scalability and observability throughout the development lifecycle.

Technical Experience

• Strong commercial experience in full stack software development, with the ability to work confidently across frontend, backend and infrastructure.
• Experience providing technical leadership, mentoring developers or taking ownership of engineering delivery.
• Solid working knowledge of a modern frontend framework such as React, Vue, Svelte or similar.
• Backend development experience using technologies such as TypeScript/Node.js, Python, Go, C# or similar.
• Experience working with relational databases, APIs (REST and/or GraphQL) and cloud infrastructure.
• Understanding of CI/CD pipelines, containerisation and infrastructure-as-code concepts.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, system design, performance, security and maintainability.
• Ability to evaluate technical approaches, communicate trade-offs and make sound architectural decisions.

If you would like to be considered for this position then please contact Tom Rayner on 02380 765 808 or email

Spectrum IT Recruitment (South) Limited is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.