Tech Lead

Sedex; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Sedex is seeking an experienced Tech Lead to drive engineering within the application layer of our SaaS platform. You will own technical direction, architect critical services, and lead a small cross-functional pod, while line-managing engineers for performance and growth.

You will champion modern development practices, automation, and AI-assisted coding to boost productivity and maintain high standards of reliability.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years' experience working in tech teams at a senior level.
• Strong production experience building systems in Kotlin or Java.
• Experience designing and evolving distributed services.
• Experience operating systems in cloud-native environments.
• Familiarity with DevOps tooling such as Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines.
• A year or more of experience working with AI coding assistants, with an ability to articulate the benefits and limitations.
• Experience mentoring, coaching, or line-managing other engineers.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Strong experience working with Agile methodologies.
• A results-oriented mindset and a keen sense of accountability.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering within the application layer of the SaaS platform.
• Line-manage engineers in your pod, focusing on performance and growth.
• Drive architectural reviews and improve development workflows and CI/CD processes.
• Embed AI-assisted development practices and tools across the team.
• Collaborate with Product, UX, and other functions to align technical decisions with business goals.
• Champion agile best practices and ensure high quality software delivery.
• Foster a security-first and reliability-driven engineering culture.

Skills

Senior level experience

Kotlin

Java

Distributed services

Cloud-native

DevOps tooling

AI coding assistants

Mentoring/line management

Agile methodologies

Communication

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

About Sedex

Sedex is a trusted partner for over 100,000 businesses worldwide, helping them create

About Sedex

Sedex is a trusted partner for over 100,000 businesses worldwide, helping them create socially and environmentally sustainable supply chains. Through our platform's powerful data insights and expert guidance, we simplify the management, assessment, and reporting of sustainability performance.

Our Vision is to be a leader in making global supply chains more socially and environmentally sustainable. Our Mission is To provide data-driven insights, accessible tools, and exceptional services that support businesses in improving environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and outcomes.

The role

We are looking for an experienced hands-on Tech Lead to lead engineering within the application layer of our SaaS platform.

You will lead a small cross-functional engineering pod responsible for building and evolving the services that power our product experience. The role combines hands-on software development, technical leadership, and architectural ownership. You will also line-manage the engineers in your pod, taking responsibility for their performance, growth, and wellbeing.

We expect our Tech Leads to be exceptional engineers first — people who lead through the quality of their thinking and the systems they build. A key part of this role is driving engineering leverage: modern development tools, automation, and AI-assisted coding allow small teams to achieve dramatically higher productivity. You will help embed these practices into everyday engineering work while maintaining high standards of reliability and maintainability.

In the First Four Weeks

• Familiarise with the systems with which your team works
• Understand the overall architectural landscape in which your systems live
• Begin driving solutions within your domain, and making positive contributions to the solutions of others via architectural reviews
• Gain an in-depth understanding of the production environment setup, CI/CD pipeline, and deployment approach
• Familiarise with and begin monitoring the operational data and metrics from the production environment
• Become productive and begin delivering at your true pace
• Build relationships cross-team and cross-function
• Understand the team processes and cycles, and start forming ideas on how they can be improved
• Develop a solid grounding in your understanding of the business and how it operates

Ongoing Responsibilities

Build and Evolve Platform Services

You will design and build the services that deliver core product capabilities. This includes:

• Designing maintainable service architectures
• Implementing high-quality production code
• Ensuring services are scalable, observable, and reliable
• Evolving systems as product requirements grow

Provide Technical Leadership

You will guide the technical direction of the services owned by your pod. This includes:

• Shaping architecture and technical design
• Making pragmatic trade-offs between speed and sustainability
• Ensuring strong engineering practices across the team
• Contributing to cross-team architectural discussions

You will lead primarily through technical credibility and example.

Line Management

You will line-manage the engineers in your pod. This is a core part of the role, not an afterthought. Your responsibilities include:

• Running regular 1:1s and providing ongoing feedback
• Supporting each engineer's professional development and career growth
• Setting clear expectations and holding people to account
• Creating a psychologically safe environment where people feel free to highlight risk, challenge ideas, and acknowledge mistakes
• Contributing to hiring decisions for your team
• Fostering a culture of personal development and individual accountability, challenging engineers to constantly push their boundaries

Improve Engineering Productivity

A central part of the role is improving how the team builds software. You will:

• Remove technical bottlenecks and sources of friction
• Simplify architecture where possible
• Improve development workflows and CI/CD processes
• Introduce automation where it improves delivery speed or reliability

Your goal is to increase the team's delivery capacity without sacrificing quality.

AI-Assisted Development

AI tools are reshaping how software is built. We expect our Tech Leads to be at the forefront of this shift - not just using AI tools themselves, but actively raising the capability of the whole team.

• Your own practice: You will use AI coding assistants as a core part of your daily development workflow - for writing and refactoring code, generating tests, exploring implementation approaches, and accelerating routine tasks.
• Coaching the team: You will help engineers in your pod develop effective AI-assisted workflows. This means guiding them on how to get the best results from these tools, how to critically review AI-generated output, and recognising when AI assistance is not the right approach.
• Evaluating and introducing tooling: You will stay current with the evolving landscape of AI development tools and make informed recommendations on what the team should adopt. This includes evaluating new tools, running trials, and making pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions.
• Establishing team norms: You will define and maintain clear standards for how AI-generated code is reviewed, tested, and integrated. AI-assisted code must meet the same quality bar as any other code - your role is to ensure this happens consistently.
• Measuring impact: You will track and demonstrate the productivity gains from AI-assisted development, using this data to refine practices and make the case for further investment.

Communication

• Collaborate closely with other functions (Product, UX, etc.) early in the solutioning process, ensuring technical considerations are appropriately represented in decisions
• Communicate clearly, both into the team and externally, on how the team contributes to the goals and priorities of the organisation
• Proactively take steps to highlight risk
• Act as an ambassador for the Tech department, interacting with stakeholders across all levels of the organisation

Delivery

• Champion agile best practices and continuous delivery, working closely with the Product function to guide the break-down of deliverables into thin vertical slices that support the early delivery of value
• Challenge the team to justify approaches based on cost-benefit and business value
• Proactively identify cross-team dependencies that may delay delivery, and work cross-team to ensure positive outcomes
• Ensure that technical expectations of deliveries are met, and that non-functional requirements are accounted for with high quality solutions
• Advocate for the use of metrics, ensuring features are measurable, and giving visibility and interpretation to those measures to facilitate informed decision-making
• Take ownership of the testing approach adopted by the team and the quality of solutions promoted to production
• Foster a security-first approach, led by example
• Lead by example through the quality and timeliness of the code you produce

What We're Looking For

We're looking for engineers who combine technical depth, productivity, and pragmatic decision-making. You should have:

• 3-5 years' experience working in tech teams at a senior level
• Strong production experience building systems in Kotlin or Java
• Experience designing and evolving distributed services
• Experience operating systems in cloud-native environments
• Familiarity with DevOps tooling such as Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines
• A year or more of experience working with AI coding assistants, with an ability to articulate the benefits and limitations
• Experience mentoring, coaching, or line-managing other engineers
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong experience working with Agile methodologies
• A results-oriented mindset and a keen sense of accountability

What Exceptional Candidates Often Look Like

Strong candidates for this role often:

• Deliver high-quality software quickly and consistently
• Simplify systems rather than introducing unnecessary complexity
• Automate repetitive engineering work
• Think carefully about system behaviour in production
• Help raise the technical bar for the engineers around the
• Are motivated not only by writing great code, but by improving how teams build software over time

Our Culture

At Sedex, our approach to business and culture is firmly rooted in our core values, which guide everything we do:

• Respect Each Other: We believe that a foundation of mutual respect is essential to creating a positive and inclusive environment.
• Customer-Driven: We are passionate about delivering exceptional value to our customers. By listening to their needs, understanding their challenges, and continuously adapting our solutions, we aim to empower them to achieve their sustainability goals and drive positive change in their supply chains.
• Thinking Creatively: Innovation is at the heart of our work. We encourage creative problem-solving and embrace new ideas that challenge the status quo. This mindset allows us to continuously improve our products and services, offering fresh and effective solutions to complex sustainability and ethical sourcing issues.
• Take Ownership: We empower our team members to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes. Every person at Sedex is encouraged to own their work, make decisions with confidence, and contribute proactively to the success of the team and the business.
• Deliver Results: We are results-oriented and committed to delivering tangible, impactful outcomes for our customers, our business, and society at large.

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