Lead Software Engineer

Jet2.com; West Yorkshire; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A travel company is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join their high-performance Search team in West Yorkshire. This role requires a technical leader responsible for optimizing search engines and improving systems performance to enhance customer experience. You will lead a scrum team, make architectural decisions, and mentor colleagues to foster growth. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of e-commerce environments and is passionate about technology, with experience in multiple modern tools and technologies.

Benefits

Hybrid working

Colleague discounts on flights and packages

Discretionary profit share scheme

Qualifications

• Deep technical understanding of search engines in a high-traffic e-commerce setting.
• Previous line management and mentoring experience.
• Ability to communicate and build relationships with stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead a scrum team in designing and coding search algorithms.
• Make architectural decisions for robust systems.
• Mentor team members and drive culture of continuous improvement.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines and ensure application observability.

Skills

Technical leadership

Strong communication

DevSecOps mindset

Experience with caching mechanisms

Tools

C#

.NET Core

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

SQL

Redis

Kafka

Job description

Overview

Job Description :

Jet2.com and Jet2holidays are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our high-performance Search team. This is an exciting hands-on role where you will be responsible for the functionality that powers the customer's first interaction with us, working across a breadth of systems and technologies to deliver value and Create Memories for both our business and our customers.

This is a role for a technical leader who loves data and solving complex problems. You won't just be building features; you'll be optimizing the engine that drives our business, ensuring that when a customer dreams of a holiday, we find it for them instantly and accurately.

As our Lead Software Engineer, you’ll have access to a wide range of benefits including :

• Hybrid working
• Colleague discounts on Jet2.com flights and Jet2holidays packages
• Access to a generous discretionary profit share scheme

What you'll be doing

As our Lead Software Engineer, you will be leading a fast-paced scrum team, made up of a lead engineer, software engineers, automation and manual test engineers, product owners and business analysts. You will also :

• Design and code low-latency search algorithms and data structures in the core search applications, explicitly optimizing for performance to handle high-concurrency traffic without degrading the customer experience.
• Creating a vision for designing and building robust and scalable systems.
• Making architectural decisions in collaboration with the Architecture Team focusing on high-availability, low-latency, and caching strategies to handle massive user load during peak booking periods.
• Supporting team activities through the software development lifecycle such as planning and estimation.
• Line managing and mentoring team members to facilitate their growth and progression.
• Championing current and new coding standards and practices.
• Driving a culture of continuous improvement.
• Improving the developer experience through automation and tooling. You will drive the implementation of CI / CD pipelines that ensure safety and quality, removing the need for manual intervention in live environments.
• Implementing observability and metrics within the search stack. You will ensure the team has visibility into application performance, search accuracy, and error rates to facilitate rapid debugging and data-driven improvements.

What is the tech stack?

The search platform has a wide range of technologies including :

• C#, .NET Core, and Web API
• Event driven architectures (Kafka)
• RESTful Microservices – light-weight efficient, decoupled APIs that scale well
• Storage technologies like SQL, Redis
• Cloud technologies (AWS)
• Containerised environments using Kubernetes, Docker and CI / CD pipelines
• Automated Testing frameworks with a strong focus on Performance and Load Testing (k6) alongside BDD

What you'll have

Our Lead Software Engineer will have deep technical understanding of Search Engines and caching mechanisms in a high-traffic e-commerce environment, be extremely passionate about technology and have some previous line management experience. You will also :

• Have strong written and verbal communication skills and be comfortable communicating and building relationships with stakeholders across the business.
• Have prior technical leadership and mentoring experience and be willing to enhance your skills in this area to support the growth of software development team.
• Be an excellent role model for the team and colleagues, with an approachable nature and the ability to work as part of a team.
• Be the point of contact for expert guidance and team support.
• A mindset focused on DevSecOps and Automation. You prefer building tools and guardrails over manual processes and have experience creating observable systems.
• Experience managing Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and understanding the impact of latency on user behaviour.

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