Tech Lead: Architect, Hands-on Coder, AI Mentor

The Citation Group; Wilmslow; Hybrid; GBP 95,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

The Citation Group in Wilmslow is seeking a Tech Lead to own architectural direction, write production code daily, and mentor engineers. You will shape the technical strategy for your product area, set coding standards, and drive secure, scalable software delivery.

This role offers remote UK flexibility and requires hands‑on leadership across backend and frontend domains. You will partner with the Engineering Manager, balance delivery with technical excellence, and champion AI‑assisted workflows

Qualifications

• Significant senior engineering experience with a track record of technical leadership on complex systems.
• Deep expertise in at least one backend stack; ability to work across multiple languages and frameworks.
• Strong full‑stack capability: backend, front‑end, databases, cloud infrastructure.
• Hands‑on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Practical knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure/AWS), containers (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Strong security fundamentals: OWASP, secure coding, threat modelling, security testing.

Responsibilities

• Make architectural decisions for your product area and own the technical direction.
• Design and implement complex features hands‑on; write production code daily.
• Lead technical discussions and design sessions and make calls when the team is stuck.
• Run technical spikes and proofs‑of‑concepts; validate approaches before full implementation.
• Balance technical excellence with delivery pragmatism; manage technical debt.
• Collaborate with architects and other Tech Leads on cross‑cutting decisions.
• Lead by example: write clean, secure code and drive testing adoption.
• Own code review culture and provide constructive feedback.
• Implement secure coding practices and build observability into systems.
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines for fast, reliable deployments.
• Mentor through pairing and live code reviews.

Skills

Senior engineering

Technical leadership

Backend expertise

Full-stack capability

Security fundamentals

Code review

TDD/BDD

Pair/mob programming

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

AI workflows

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Azure

AWS

Job description

The Citation Group in Wilmslow is seeking a Tech Lead to own architectural direction, write production code daily, and mentor engineers. You will shape the technical strategy for your product area, set coding standards, and drive secure, scalable software delivery.

This role offers remote UK flexibility and requires hands‑on leadership across backend and frontend domains. You will partner with the Engineering Manager, balance delivery with technical excellence, and champion AI‑assisted workflows