Lead Engineer

Collinson (Singapore); Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Collinson Group in the United Kingdom seeks a Lead Engineer to be the technical backbone of a 5–7 person squad, writing code daily and setting high standards for quality.

You'll work with an Engineering Manager and Product Manager to design, build, and deploy scalable, cloud-native software using TypeScript, AWS, and GraphQL, embedding AI and automation across greenfield systems. This is a hands-on role with mentoring responsibilities and an emphasis on TDD, CI/CD, and observability.

Qualifications

• Lead Engineer or Tech Lead experience guiding a small software team.
• Experience building and running robust APIs (RESTful and GraphQL) and underlying services.
• Familiar with testing frameworks such as Jest and Pact.
• Ability to deploy and run systems end-to-end using Terraform and Helm.
• CI/CD pipelines management with GitHub Actions and modern observability tooling.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and deploy scalable, high-performance software for client-side and server-side applications.
• Provide technical leadership and ensure best practices in code quality, design patterns, architecture, security, and performance.
• Spend substantial time writing and reviewing code, designing APIs, and maintaining quality.
• Collaborate with UX, build APIs, and deliver well-functioning services.
• Mentor engineers, promoting continuous learning and technical excellence.
• Deploy and manage apps on AWS using Terraform, Kubernetes, and containerized workloads.

Skills

Technical leadership

Mentoring

Full stack engineering

Problem solving

Self-starter

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

React

AWS

EKS

Lambda

Aurora RDS

Kubernetes

GraphQL

Kafka

Mongo

Terraform

Helm

CI/CD

GitHub Actions

DataDog

Confluence

Jira

Jest

Pact

Job description

Role Purpose

As a Lead Engineer, you'll be the technical backbone of your squad (of around 5-7 engineers) - leading from the front, writing code daily, and setting the standard for high-quality engineering. You'll work side by side with an Engineering Manager, ensuring your squad is delivering scalable, well-architected software, while collaborating closely with a Product Manager to build and launch new products and services as a partnership.

This is a hands-on role, with a strong focus on designing, coding, and problem solving. You'll be the most experienced engineer in the squad, guiding senior engineers, responsible for refining technical requirements, making key architectural decisions, and mentoring engineers to help them grow.

With modern, cloud-native technologies (including Typescript, AWS, GraphQL) and the freedom to approach problems with fresh thinking, you'll be building greenfield systems from the ground up. Expect to embed AI, automation, and best-in-class engineering practices into everything you develop.

If you love writing great code, solving complex technical challenges, and shaping the direction of a team, this role gives you the autonomy, responsibility, and impact to do just that.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the Design & Development - Architect, build, and deploy scalable, high-performance software solutions, covering both client-side and server-side applications.
• Technical Leadership - Guide the squad in technical decision-making, ensuring the team follows best practices in code quality, design patterns, architecture, security, and performance.
• Hands-On Engineering - Spend most of your time writing and reviewing code, designing APIs, and ensuring high-quality, maintainable software.
• Full Stack Development - Build any necessary user-interfaces in collaboration with our UX team, and develop well-functioning APIs, and services.
• Mentorship & Coaching - Support and mentor engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence.
• Cloud & Infrastructure - Deploy and manage applications on AWS using Terraform, Kubernetes, and containerized workloads.
• Quality & Testing - Champion Test-Driven Development (TDD), automated testing, and CI/CD, ensuring deployments are secure and reliable.

Knowledge, Skills, and experience required

• Tech stack - We use TypeScript (Node.js & React), AWS (EKS, Lambda, Aurora RDS), Kubernetes, GraphQL, Kafka, Mongo. You're comfortable with all of these, and have extensive knowledge of JavaScript more generally, the AWS ecosystem, and running containerised applications.
• Past Experience - You are currently a Lead Engineer or Tech Lead, leading a small team of software engineers.
• API & Database Development - You have experience building and running robust, always-on APIs (both RESTful and GraphQL-based) and underlying services/apps including the databases that underpin them.
• Test-Driven Development - You're very familiar with testing frameworks such as Jest and Pact.
• Cloud & DevOps - You can build, deploy and run your systems end-to-end, with no manual configuration or intervention. We use Terraform and Helm.
• CI/CD - You have plenty experience managing and configuring CI/CD pipelines (we use GitHub Actions) for deployments.
• Observability Mindset - You believe in measuring everything. You've worked with DataDog (or similar) to ensure your team has the necessary visibility into system health.
• Tooling & Collaboration - Comfortable working with Git, Confluence, Jira, and modern engineering workflows.
• Mentorship & Leadership - You've mentored engineers at all levels, providing guidance, reviewing designs, and ensuring your team stays on the right track.
• Self-Starter & Problem-Solver - Ability to take a product challenge and develop a working technical solution, balancing pragmatism with engineering excellence.

Reward & Benefits: What's in it for me?

We want our people to feel recognised, supported and able to thrive both at work and beyond it.

We offer a competitive reward package designed to support your financial, physical and mental wellbeing, alongside opportunities to learn, develop and be recognised for the contribution you make. Benefits vary by role and location, and full details will be shared as part of the application process.

Equal opportunities: Our commitment to inclusion

Collinson Group is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, identities and experiences, and believe that different perspectives make our business stronger.