Technical Lead

Lorien; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Lorien is seeking an experienced Technical Lead to own the architecture and engineering standards for a major digital product in London. You will guide both backend and frontend teams, ensuring scalable, secure and maintainable foundations while remaining hands-on where it matters.

This 12-month hybrid role sits inside IR35 and requires strong technical leadership across services, cloud, and data integration.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading technical design and delivery of complex production systems.
• Strong hands-on backend experience in Python and FastAPI, including async patterns and service design.
• Strong frontend experience with React and TypeScript.
• Strong AWS knowledge, including Lambda, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, IAM and CloudWatch.
• Solid experience with event-driven architecture, integration design and defining service boundaries.
• Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, Docker, infrastructure-as-code and deployment automation.
• Good understanding of observability (logs, metrics, tracing, alerting) and secure system design (authentication, authorisation, secrets management, least privilege).
• Experience supporting live systems and improving resilience over time in Agile environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical integrity of the product across its full engineering lifecycle.
• Make and guide architectural decisions across services, APIs, integrations and system boundaries.
• Drive strong standards in code quality, testing, documentation, security and operational readiness.
• Lead root-cause analysis for significant incidents and recurring issues across services.
• Partner with DevOps and platform engineers on CI/CD, deployment strategy and infrastructure patterns.
• Keep technical debt visible and actively managed as part of product prioritisation.
• Contribute to planning, estimation and sequencing so delivery stays realistic and executable.
• Coach engineers by giving them context and direction, without micromanaging.

Skills

Python

FastAPI

React

TypeScript

AWS

CI/CD

Docker

IaC

Observability

Security

Tools

Cloud/AWS services

Docker

Terraform

Job description

We’re looking for an experienced Technical Lead to take technical ownership of a high-profile digital product for a major organisation. You’ll be the senior-most engineer on the product team, shaping the architecture, setting engineering standards and staying hands-on where it matters most. You’ll also guide the product towards a more scalable, secure and maintainable technical foundation.

This is a 12-month contract based in London on a hybrid basis, and it sits inside IR35.

The role

You’ll provide end-to-end technical leadership across backend, frontend, cloud, CI/CD, observability and data integration. You’ll turn business and product requirements into robust technical designs, support engineers through complex problems, and challenge weak design decisions. Delivery needs to stay both technically credible and aligned with product goals.

What you’ll do

• Own the technical integrity of the product across its full engineering lifecycle.
• Make and guide architectural decisions across services, APIs, integrations and system boundaries.
• Drive strong standards in code quality, testing, documentation, security and operational readiness.
• Lead root-cause analysis for significant incidents and recurring issues across services.
• Partner with DevOps and platform engineers on CI/CD, deployment strategy and infrastructure patterns.
• Keep technical debt visible and actively managed as part of product prioritisation.
• Contribute to planning, estimation and sequencing so delivery stays realistic and executable.
• Coach engineers by giving them context and direction, without micromanaging.

What we’re looking for

• Proven experience leading technical design and delivery of complex production systems.
• Strong hands-on backend experience in Python and FastAPI, including async patterns and service design.
• Strong frontend experience with React and TypeScript.
• Strong AWS knowledge, including Lambda, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, IAM and CloudWatch.
• Solid experience with event-driven architecture, integration design and defining service boundaries.
• Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, Docker, infrastructure-as-code and deployment automation.
• Good understanding of observability (logs, metrics, tracing, alerting) and secure system design (authentication, authorisation, secrets management, least privilege).
• Experience supporting live systems and improving resilience over time in Agile environments.
• The ability to explain trade-offs clearly to engineers and non-engineers, and to influence direction without relying on formal authority.

About you

You communicate clearly and directly and bring structure to ambiguity. You stay calm and credible under pressure. You balance architectural quality with delivery reality, raise standards while staying pragmatic, and build alignment through reasoning rather than hierarchy.