Lead Engineer

CreateFuture; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job description

Who we are

CreateFuture is fast becoming the UK's most recognisable digital consultancy, with years of experience building digital products and services for major organisations whilst putting our people first. We have offices in the centre of Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, and London as well as remote employees located throughout the country.

We are a team of creators - whether that's code, project plans, go to market strategies, culture initiatives, marketing campaigns, large language models or people policies. And together, with our clients, we create the future. This has seen us collaborate and partner across a multitude of industries and sectors, with the likes of PayPal, Adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, to name just a few.

Our reputation as a partner determined to deliver high-quality, robust and thoughtful products has enabled us to scale to over 500 people in the last couple of years, and it is our amazing people - along with the safe, supportive and friendly culture we have built - that makes CreateFuture a great place to work. Don't just take our word for it though, we have been recognised by Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row - across a number of categories - and our employee exit rate is astonishingly low.

Join us on our journey... Let's create something awesome, together, today.

About the role and team:

Lead Engineers play a pivotal role in supporting the success of our Engineers, our clients and our internal projects. Working closely with clients, you are responsible for the successful delivery of client and internal projects through building professional relationships with key client stakeholders, challenging where appropriate, and using your technical expertise to provide best practice advice and processes within your project team.

As a Lead Engineer, you are seen as a leader internally and externally, through your technical expertise, guidance and professionalism, both on (and off) a project.

What you'll be doing:

1. Technical Leadership & Project Delivery: Guides technical direction, ensures best practices, resolves complex issues, and maintains high standards across multiple projects.
2. Client Collaboration: Builds strong client relationships, understands their needs, and ensures project deliverables align with SLAs, timelines, and budgets.
3. Decision-Making & Problem-Solving: Makes informed decisions on project priorities, escalates issues when necessary, and adapts to changing contexts effectively.
4. Technical Expertise & Knowledge Sharing: Acts as a subject matter expert, mentors engineers, contributes to technical communities, and stays updated on industry trends.
5. Innovation & Process Improvement: Identifies opportunities for process enhancements, ensures best practices, and contributes to the organisation's technical growth.
6. Leadership & Team Development: Leads by example, fosters a collaborative and inclusive culture, provides constructive feedback, and supports engineers' career growth.
7. Consultancy & Business Growth: Identifies additional revenue opportunities, supports pre-sales activities, and collaborates with the commercial team to secure new work.

We'd love to talk to you if you have:

1. Proven experience as a technical leader, balancing hands-on technical skills with client delivery and stakeholder management expertise.
2. Commercial experience with one or more technical stacks: Java, .NET, Typescript (Backend/Frontend), React, NodeJS, and modern cloud infrastructure (ideally AWS or Azure).
3. Strong ability to build client relationships, understand their challenges, and provide effective solutions across technical and project management aspects.
4. You are familiar with Scrum/Kanban methodologies and ideally experienced in contributing to sales and shaping how engagements are delivered in a consultancy setting.

As this is a hybrid role, we're looking for people within a commuting distance of our hub locations (Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester or London) and who are flexible to travel to client sites and CreateFuture regional offices. We are very flexible and trust you to manage your own schedule to balance face-to-face time with clients, colleagues and working from home.

We create and reinforce a culture that rewards employees' impact, not just activity. We trust our employees to work autonomously and promote ownership across all levels.

Our interview process is designed as an opportunity both for our interviewers to learn about your expertise, interests and motivations and for you to gain insights into the role, team and business as a whole, so throughout the process, you'll meet a few people from our team as well as others from across the business to help you get a well-rounded view of the role and life at CreateFuture.

We believe that representative teams made up of people with different backgrounds, skills, and points of view help us build the best workplace possible, and enable us to create genuinely innovative, broadly useful products.