Lead Developer

Lead Software Engineer Manchester | Hybrid (2 Days Per Week)
Up to £85,000 + 20% Annual Bonus + Excellent Benefits

Build software that powers a global SaaS platform. We're partnering with a highly successful international SaaS business undergoing a major engineering transformation. Following significant investment into cloud-native technology, platform modernisation and engineering capability, we're looking for an experienced Lead Software Engineer to help shape the next generation of highly scalable products used by enterprise customers across Europe.

This is a genuine opportunity to join an engineering-first organisation where technical excellence is valued just as highly as delivery.
You'll remain hands-on while leading a small, high-performing team of engineers, influencing architecture, mentoring developers and helping define engineering standards across multiple cloud-native products.

If you're passionate about modern software engineering and enjoy solving complex distributed systems problems, this is the type of role that doesn't come around often.

The Opportunity You'll work within one of the organisation's flagship product teams responsible for building highly available, cloud-native SaaS applications used at significant scale.

Working alongside Architects, Product Managers, Platform Engineers and Quality Engineers, you'll help deliver resilient distributed systems built around microservices, event-driven architecture and modern engineering practices.
This is not a people-management role disguised as leadership.
You'll still spend the majority of your time designing solutions, writing code, reviewing pull requests and helping solve challenging engineering problems whilst mentoring a team of talented developers.

What You'll Be Doing

• Leading a small Agile engineering squad whilst remaining hands-on
• Designing scalable cloud-native applications using modern .NET
• Building event-driven microservice architectures
• Collaborating closely with Product, Architecture and Platform teams
• Driving engineering best practice, clean code and quality standards
• Coaching and mentoring Software Engineers
• Contributing to architecture and technical direction
• Reviewing code and promoting engineering excellence
• Supporting CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code and DevOps practices
• Championing continuous improvement across the SDLC

Technology You'll work with a modern engineering stack including:

• C#
• .NET 8 / .NET 9
• AWS
• Terraform
• Microservices
• Event-Driven Architecture
• REST APIs
• DynamoDB / SQL
• React & TypeScript
• GitHub Actions
• Docker / Containers
• CI/CD
• Infrastructure as Code

We're Looking For You'll probably have experience with most of the following:

• Strong commercial experience developing enterprise applications in C#/.NET
• Experience leading or mentoring Software Engineers
• Building cloud-native applications within AWS
• Designing scalable distributed systems and microservices
• Event-driven architecture (messaging, asynchronous systems)
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)
• CI/CD and modern DevOps practices
• RESTful APIs
• React or modern frontend frameworks
• Comfortable working within Agile product teams
• Passion for engineering quality, scalability and continuous improvement

Why Join? This is an opportunity to join an engineering organisation where technology genuinely drives the business.
You'll be joining during a significant period of investment, working on large-scale greenfield and platform-modernisation initiatives rather than simply maintaining legacy software.
Engineers are encouraged to influence architecture, challenge technical decisions and introduce new ideas, with clear progression into Principal Engineering, Engineering Management or Architecture as the organisation continues to grow.
Package

• Up to £85,000 basic salary
• 20% annual performance bonus
• Hybrid working (2 days per week in Manchester)
• Private healthcare
• Enhanced pension
• Excellent holiday allowance
• Ongoing training and certifications
• Clear career progression within a growing engineering function