Embedded Software - Team Leader

Matchtech; Essex; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading recruitment agency is seeking an Embedded Software Team Leader to mentor a small team while contributing to innovative technology projects across various industries. The ideal candidate will have extensive embedded software experience and some leadership exposure, looking to take the next step. The role combines technical development with team leadership, focusing on sectors like healthcare and defense. This position is hybrid, requiring three days onsite in the UK.

Qualifications

• Strong experience in embedded software development, ideally across environments such as bare metal, RTOS, or embedded Linux.
• Some leadership exposure through running small project teams or mentoring.
• Confidence in communicating technical ideas to various stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead a small embedded software team, providing mentoring and performance reviews.
• Provide technical leadership in multi-disciplinary project teams.
• Help develop coding standards and future technology direction.

Skills

Embedded software development

Leadership

Communicating technical ideas

Technical depth in device drivers

Job description

Embedded Software Team Leader to mentor a high-performing embedded software team while working on innovative, real-world tech across diverse industries.

Key skills required for this role

Embedded Software Engineer

Important

Embedded Software and Leadership

This position offers a roughly 80/20 split between hands-on embedded software development and leadership responsibilities, supporting a small team of 3-5 specialist software engineers. Projects are varied-ranging from short 2-day sprints to full-scale 2-year development programmes-across a wide range of industries.

It's an excellent fit for someone with solid embedded software experience and some exposure toleadership-whether direct orinformal-who's ready to take the next step. A broader understanding of cloud or application-level development is also useful, given the diversity of work.

Location: Commute from Cambridge, Saffron Walden, Newmarket, Braintree, Hitchen, Harlow, St Neots, Bury St Edmunds, Chelmsford (Hybrid, 3 days onsite)
Type: Permanent | Hands-on Technical + Leadership

Other: No Visa sponsorship available

The Opportunity
This is a hands-on role combining software development with team leadership. You'll lead a small, close-knit sub-team within a larger multidisciplinary software group, contributing to the design and delivery of embedded systems for a range of real-world applications-from radar and sensing technologies to IoT devices and advanced communication systems.

Projects span sectors such as defence, healthcare, and industrial innovation, blending embedded software, electronics, FPGA, cloud, and system-level engineering.

As a Lead Software Engineer, your responsibilities will include:

• Line management and mentoring for 3-5 engineers, supporting career development, conducting performance reviews, and assisting with resource planning.
• Technical leadership within multi-disciplinary project teams, including architecture decisions and code contributions.
• Process and practice development across the team, helping shape coding standards, development methodologies, and future technology direction.

What We're Looking For
You'll be a capable and well-rounded embedded software engineer with a natural inclination to guide others. Our ideal candidate brings:

• Strong experience in embedded software development, ideally across environments such as bare metal, RTOS, or embedded Linux.
• Technical depth in areas such as device drivers, DSP, communications protocols, algorithm implementation, or working close to hardware.
• Some leadership exposure-this could be through running small project teams, mentoring, or handling performance reviews.
• Confidence in communicating technical ideas, presenting to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, and producing well-reasoned project estimates.
• Ideally, experience in a consultancy or project-based engineering environment, comfortable balancing technical excellence with time and budget constraints.

Matchtech is a STEM Recruitment Specialist, with over 40 years’ experience