Senior Technical Lead & Systems Architect (Hybrid)

AI Chopping Block; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

AI Chopping Block is seeking a Lead Engineer in a hybrid setup, requiring hands-on coding and strong architectural leadership. You will own design and implementation of complex products, guiding teams across backend, frontend, APIs and infrastructure from concept to production.

You will mentor engineers, drive major initiatives, and ensure code quality, reliability and scalable systems while balancing speed and maintainability.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering background with production systems experience.
• Deep technical expertise in backend, frontend, distributed systems, APIs or cloud infrastructure.
• Strong system design and architecture skills with experience making technical decisions for complex or high-scale systems.
• Willingness to remain hands-on and code regularly.
• Proven experience leading major engineering projects or providing technical leadership to other engineers.
• Ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly and influence engineers across teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical design and execution of major products and initiatives.
• Design scalable, reliable and maintainable systems across backend, frontend, APIs, databases or infrastructure.
• Stay hands-on with engineering through coding, prototyping, code reviews, debugging and production problem-solving.
• Make architecture decisions and technical trade-offs that balance speed, scalability, reliability and maintainability.
• Break ambiguous product and technical problems into clear engineering solutions and execution plans.
• Set a high bar for code quality, system design, testing, security, observability and production reliability.
• Review technical designs and code from other engineers and provide clear, actionable feedback.
• Mentor engineers and help strengthen technical capability across the team.
• Identify technical risks, bottlenecks and architectural weaknesses before they become larger problems.
• Work closely with engineering, product, design and AI teams to ship high-quality products quickly.
• Improve engineering tooling, development practices and automation to increase team velocity.
• Own systems beyond release — monitor production, investigate incidents, resolve root causes and continuously improve reliability.

Skills

Software engineering

System design

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Code review

Technical leadership

Production systems

Hands-on coding

Job description

AI Chopping Block is seeking a Lead Engineer in a hybrid setup, requiring hands-on coding and strong architectural leadership. You will own design and implementation of complex products, guiding teams across backend, frontend, APIs and infrastructure from concept to production.

You will mentor engineers, drive major initiatives, and ensure code quality, reliability and scalable systems while balancing speed and maintainability.