Software Engineer Tech Lead

Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions Limited; Bristol; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equal opportunity employer

Stable and experienced team

Job summary

Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions Limited is seeking a Technical Lead to provide senior technical leadership in AI Engineering and Architecture. This role involves hands-on coding, defining scalable architectures, and mentoring engineers.

Key responsibilities include driving AI-assisted development practices, ensuring high-quality engineering standards, and managing the architecture across diverse products. Ideal candidates will have strong coding skills in enterprise languages like C# or Java, and experience with AI technologies.

Qualifications

• Hands-on software engineering capability with recent production coding experience.
• Strong proficiency in enterprise languages (C#, Java, or similar).
• Demonstrable experience driving AI-assisted development.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the technical architecture across all products.
• Mentor and coach developers across all experience levels.
• Lead the adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices.

Skills

Secure coding

Performance optimisation

C#

Java

AI-assisted development

Cloud platforms

DevOps

Tools

Azure

CI/CD

Automation tooling

Job description

## Software Engineer Tech LeadApplylocations: United Kingdom - Bristoltime type: Full timeposted on: Posted 2 Days Agojob requisition id: R57063**Job Summary:**Technical Lead – AI Engineering & Architecture Reports to: Software Development Manager Remote – UK About the Role We are looking for a highly experienced and hands-on Technical Lead to provide senior technical leadership across the organisation. This is not a traditional management role focused only on people leadership or delivery coordination. We are looking for someone who still enjoys coding, solving technical problems, shaping architecture, and mentoring engineers. You will play a key role in: Defining scalable architecture across our growing product portfolio Leading the adoption of AI-assisted development practices Strengthening engineering quality, security, and compliance standards Driving consistency and technical excellence across teams This role combines architecture, hands-on engineering, AI strategy, mentoring, and technical leadership. You will have the opportunity to work across both greenfield development and established legacy products, helping modernise existing platforms while also shaping the future architecture and technical direction of new solutions. This role offers the chance to influence technology decisions across the full product lifecycle, from innovation and new product development through to optimisation and transformation of existing systems.**Job Description:****What Success Looks Like**In this role, you will help deliver:* Clear and scalable technical architecture across all products* Consistent engineering standards and secure development practices* Successful adoption of AI-assisted engineering workflows* Improved engineering quality, scalability, and delivery consistency* Stronger technical capability and mentoring culture across teams* A technical roadmap aligned to long-term business growth**Key Responsibilities****Technical Architecture**You will:* Define and maintain the technical architecture across all products* Lead architectural decision-making and technical direction* Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business needs* Recommend technologies, frameworks, and platforms to support future growth* Establish engineering standards, design patterns, and best practices* Improve consistency and collaboration across products and engineering teams* Manage the long-term technical roadmap, including technical debt prioritisation**Hands-On Technical Leadership**You will:* Remain actively involved in coding and technical delivery* Contribute directly to architecture, development, troubleshooting, and code reviews* Lead by example through high-quality engineering practices* Support teams with complex technical challenges and escalation points* Act as a senior technical authority across engineering teams* Balance engineering decisions across speed, scalability, security, and maintainability**AI Strategy & AI-Assisted Development**You will lead the adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices across the organisation.This includes:* Defining standards, best practices, and guardrails for AI-assisted development* Supporting the use of AI tooling for: + Code generation + Automated code review + Intelligent testing + Documentation support + Development acceleration* Establishing responsible AI governance aligned with ISO/IEC 42001 principles* Ensuring AI-assisted development practices are implemented securely and consistently* Promoting AI literacy and prompt engineering capability across engineering teams* Evaluating emerging AI technologies and identifying productivity opportunities**Security, Compliance & Engineering Standards**You will:* Lead secure-by-design engineering practices* Support ISO 27001 and ISO/IEC 42001 initiatives* Define and enforce coding standards, review processes, and quality expectations* Improve engineering quality metrics and continuous improvement practices* Support performance optimisation, resilience, scalability, and reliability* Lead vulnerability remediation and security improvement activities**DevOps & Automation**You will:* Architect and improve CI/CD pipelines* Champion infrastructure-as-code and deployment automation* Define standards for automated testing and release processes* Support release governance and environment management* Drive modern engineering automation practices**People & Team Development**You will:* Mentor and coach developers across all experience levels* Support technical growth and engineering excellence* Encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration across teams* Identify skills gaps and support development planning* Support technical recruitment, onboarding, and assessments* Help shape technical career progression pathways**Skills & Experience****Essential*** Experience with secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and performance optimisation* Senior engineering, architecture, or technical leadership experience, leading technical direction across complex software products or platforms* Hands-on software engineering capability with recent production coding experience* Strong proficiency in enterprise languages (C#, Java, or similar) and cloud platforms, with hands-on Azure experience.* Demonstrable experience driving AI-assisted development in real engineering teams - hands-on with AI-powered development tools, prompt engineering, and LLM-based workflows, plus an understanding of AI governance and responsible AI practices* Strong grasp of software architecture, scalable system design, DevOps, CI/CD, and automation tooling* Experience with secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and performance optimisation* Ability to mentor and influence technical teams, with strong communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders**Nice to Have*** Experience working across multiple products or platforms* Experience within SaaS, transport, mobility, or regulated industries* Familiarity with ISO 27001, ISO/IEC 42001, or similar frameworks* Experience defining AI governance policies and engineering standards* Track record of improving engineering productivity through AI tooling* Experience working within agile and cross-functional engineering environments**Worker Type:**Regular**Number of Openings Available:**1### About UsImperial is the UK's largest and most experienced provider of parking, environmental and traffic management systems. With over thirty years' experience, Imperial provides fully-integrated business processing and IT solutions to public authorities, universities, hospitals and private enforcement contractors right across the country. With award-winning services, utilisation of proven, yet leading-edge, technology, Imperial now has the UK’s largest client portfolio in civil enforcement. We bring an unrivalled combination of sector insight, technology skills and the experience of a number of successful service partnerships; undoubtedly providing the capacity, experience and expertise needed to deliver integrated enforcement solutions.Being part of the Imperial Business Systems Group continues to mean that all clients benefit from a stable and successful resource dedicated to the development and application of enforcement technology. The company’s established team of system engineers has pioneered recent advances in parking enforcement technology as a direct result of its close client and e-Government partnerships and its progressive User Group. These ongoing developments are supported by stringent management disciplines, a full range of application support services and an overriding commitment to meet the evolving priorities and operational requirements of each client, as well as periodic changes in traffic management legislation. The software allows for easy integration with third-party products, technologies and interfaces to support the Government’s joined-up approach. *Imperial is an equal opportunity employer, we recruit, hire, train, promote and provide all other privileges of employment to qualified people without regard to age, race, creed, national origin, gender, gender identity, gender expression, disability, marital status, citizenship status, ethnicity, familial status, religion, sexual orientation or any other classification for which discrimination is prohibited.*