Technical Lead

Appnovation; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Appnovation is seeking a UK-based Technical Lead to drive quality and excellence in delivering web properties on a composable stack. You’ll translate business goals into concrete technical plans, lead a global team, and own architecture decisions across CMS, Node, and React front ends with strong governance and accessibility focus.

You will be the technical voice to clients, manage risk, and ensure delivery milestones are met with automated testing and CI/CD in place.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software development with web properties.
• Experience leading a team and communicating with non-technical stakeholders.
• Hands-on with headless CMS, React and Node.js.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction of assigned projects and translate goals into deliverable plans.
• Set architecture decisions across the composable stack and ensure quality standards.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to communicate risks, trade-offs, and progress.
• Ensure accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA and compliance with UK/EU regulations.
• Mentor developers and uphold CI/CD, testing, and performance goals.

Skills

Technical leadership

Client communication

Architecture design

Project planning

Team mentoring

Quality assurance

CI/CD practices

Accessibility WCAG 2.2 AA

SEO knowledge

AI-assisted development

React/Next.js experience

Node.js/TypeScript

Tools

n8n

Make

Zapier

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Vercel

Netlify

AWS

Azure

Job description

• We are hiring a UK-based Technical Lead to work with our existing global team and promote quality and excellence in our web-based solution delivery
• Our team builds and runs corporate and enterprise-scale web properties on a composable stack: headless CMS, Node and React front ends, and the integrations that connect them to the client’s wider platform
• You will be the team’s technical voice to the client as well as leading the development of your assigned projects. You will work with the team to translate business goals into a clear deliverable technical plan while communicating trade-offs, risk and progress to stakeholders
• This is a hands‑on technical leadership role. You will plan, code and review, while being accountable for the technical outcome of the project team
• Set the team’s technical direction and own architecture and design decisions across the composable stack
• Select and justify the right headless CMS, front‑end framework and hosting approach for each property, weighing editorial experience, performance, cost and lock‑in
• Design content models and component libraries that scale across multiple brands, sites, regions and locales
• Uphold coding standards and best practices through consistent code review
• Ensure developers test their own work before it reaches QA, with automated testing and CI/CD in place
• Hold the team to clear standards for security, accessibility, search and performance
• Own accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA as a minimum, with awareness of the European Accessibility Act and UK public‑sector regulations where they apply. Build it into components, content models and testing, combining automated tools (axe, Lighthouse) with manual keyboard and screen‑reader checks
• Own technical SEO: semantic HTML, structured data (schema.org), metadata, canonicals, sitemaps, hreflang for multi‑region sites, and redirect strategy during migrations
• Prepare properties for answer engine optimisation (AEO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO), so content is structured, attributable and easy for AI search and assistants to find, understand and cite
• Set performance budgets and hold the team to Core Web Vitals targets (LCP, INP, CLS), using real‑user monitoring as well as lab testing
• Build these checks into CI so regressions are caught before release, not after
• Lead a team working in a heavily AI‑tooled environment, using coding assistants and agents such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot or Cursor, and set clear rules for how they are used
• Preserve codebase quality: AI‑generated code meets the same standards for review, testing, security and maintainability as hand‑written code
• Keep people accountable: every change has an owner who understands it, and architecture decisions are not delegated to tools
• Maintain the guardrails that make AI output reliable, including linting, type checking, test coverage, documented conventions and context files the tools can follow
• Watch for AI‑specific risks, such as client data or secrets in prompts, licence and IP concerns, and duplicated or inconsistent code
• Plan and lead content and platform migrations from legacy or monolithic CMS platforms to headless, including content audits, mapping, transformation and URL redirect strategy
• Design repeatable migration and automation pipelines using n8n or similar tools, alongside custom Node scripts where needed
• Lead integration development between the CMS and the client’s wider estate, such as CRM, DAM, PIM, search, analytics, marketing automation and identity
• Own API design, webhooks and event‑driven patterns, with clear error handling, monitoring and rollback
• Own documentation for architecture, content models, integrations, design decisions and technical specifications
• Turn one‑to‑one guidance into reusable material so onboarding and handoff don’t depend on any one person
• Stay current on client‑specific compliance requirements, such as UK GDPR, cookie consent (PECR) and accessibility obligations
• Break plans down into well‑formed tasks and stories the team can act on
• Delegate work fairly and evenly across the team
• Coach and mentor developers to grow the team’s capability in headless and composable delivery
• Serve as the client’s primary contact for technical discussions
• Explain technical concepts, options and status to non‑technical stakeholders, including marketing and content teams, in plain language
• Manage client expectations honestly on scope, effort and risk
• Lead technical input to planning, estimation and backlog refinement
• Track progress against milestones and budget with the project manager
• Identify technical risks early, particularly around migration cut‑over and third‑party integrations, and elevate critical issues before they become surprises
• Seek client feedback and fold it into development cycles
• Spot genuine opportunities to add value for the client, and bring them to the account team
• What success looks like:
• Delegation is healthy. Work is spread across the team, not bottlenecked on you
• Documentation survives handoff. A new engineer can onboard and maintain the system from what is written down
• Migrations land cleanly. Content moves with no lost pages, broken links or SEO drop, and cut‑overs happen on the planned date
• Standards are measurable. Properties meet WCAG 2.2 AA and Core Web Vitals targets, and are visible in both traditional and AI‑driven search
• Quality holds as speed rises. AI tooling increases throughput without increasing defects, accessibility issues or performance regressions
• Editors are self‑sufficient. Content teams can build and publish pages without developer help
• Integrations are reliable. Data flows between systems are monitored, and failures are caught before the client notices
• The client trusts you. Stakeholders route technical decisions through you

Right to work in the UKProven ability to turn a technical vision into a clear, actionable plan a team can executeA track record delivering corporate and enterprise-scale web properties: multi-site, multi-brand or multi-region platforms with high traffic, complex governance and many stakeholders8+ years in software development, including at least 2 years leading a fan's technical directionExcellent communication with non-technical audiencesComposable architecture: designing MACH‑style (microservices, API‑first, cloud‑native, headless) solutions and making sound build‑versus‑buy decisionsMigrations: leading content or platform migrations at scale, using n8n or similar automation tools (e.g. Make, Zapier, custom ETL) as well as scripted approachesEngineering practice: Git workflows, CI/CD, automated testing, and deployment to platforms such as Vercel, Netlify, AWS or AzureHeadless CMS: hands‑on delivery with at least two of Sanity, Contentful, Builder.io, Strapi or Webflow, including content modelling, editorial workflows, localisation and previewSearch, AEO and GEO: technical SEO, structured data, and structuring content so it performs in AI‑driven search and answer enginesPerformance: Core Web Vitals, performance budgets, caching and CDN strategy, and image, font and script optimisationReact: strong production experience, ideally with Next.js or a similar framework, covering SSR, SSG and ISR rendering strategiesIntegration development: REST and GraphQL APIs, webhooks, authentication (OAuth, SSO) and connecting a CMS to CRM, DAM, PIM, search and analytics platformsAI‑assisted development: daily, fluent use of AI coding tools, with the judgement to review, test and reject their output so the codebase stays clean and maintainableNode.js and TypeScript: building APIs, serverless functions, middleware and scriptsAccessibility: in‑depth knowledge of WCAG 2.2 AA, ARIA and semantic HTML, with hands‑on assistive‑technology testingConsulting or agency experience, managing client relationships alongside deliveryExperience writing AI usage policies or engineering guidelines for a teamExperience establishing team practices from scratch on a new engagementExperience with commerce or search platforms in a composable stack (e.g. Shopify, commercetools, Algolia)Certifications or partner experience with Sanity, Contentful or other composable vendorsFamiliarity with design systems and tools such as Storybook and Figma