Technical Lead

SMG

Greater London

Hybrid

GBP 95,000 - 130,000

Full time

42 hours ago

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Benefits offered by this job

10% discretionary bonus

Wellbeing fund £1,800/year

Headspace subscription

Uni Fund £500/year learning

4 wellbeing days off/year

Summer conference & celebrations

4pm finishes every Friday

Flexible and hybrid working

Job summary

SMG, a pioneer in connected commerce marketing, seeks a Technical Lead to head a product-focused engineering squad. You will own architecture decisions, ensure resilient cloud deployments, and set standards across SMG’s product engineering org.

This is a hands-on leadership role with mentoring, code contributions, and cross-team collaboration. You will design scalable platforms, guide engineers, and drive delivery reliability, security, and observability while partnering with Product and other

Qualifications

Extensive software engineering experience with senior engineer/tech lead responsibilities.
Hands-on delivery: design, review and deliver frontend UI and backend services & integrations.
Experience translating product goals into engineering work with clear acceptance criteria.
Experience line-managing or mentoring engineers.
Hands-on with NoSQL (MongoDB) and relational DBs (PostgreSQL/MySQL).
Experience operating services in AWS and/or Azure; cloud-agnostic design ability.
Knowledge of containers, orchestration, CI/CD, and Terraform/IaC.
Experience implementing monitoring, logging, tracing; drive reliability improvements.
Security-by-design: threat modelling, IAM, secrets management and encryption practices.

Responsibilities

Refine requirements with Product to prepare specifications for delivery.
Produce clear design specs and templates for architecture and APIs.
Plan platform re-architecture to scale for growth and new business models.
Unblock technical challenges by contributing code and pair programming.
Ensure high-quality, secure, observable product outcomes and mentoring.
Lead code reviews and promote reusable components and patterns.
Define CI/CD pipelines, IaC usage, deployment patterns, and runbooks.
Collaborate with Security and Data teams to embed security considerations.

Skills

Technical leadership

Frontend & Backend delivery

Mentoring engineers

Cloud platforms

NoSQL (MongoDB)

Relational DBs (PostgreSQL/MySQL)

CI/CD & IaC

Observability practices

Tools

MongoDB

PostgreSQL/MySQL

AWS

Azure

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Terraform

Infrastructure as Code

Observability tooling

Job description

Location: 1-2 days per week in the London office

Who are we?

We’re the original pioneers in connected commerce marketing. Since 2008, we’ve been partnering with major retailers, powering global brands, and building meaningful connections with shoppers.

We simplify the mind-boggling complexity of today’s retail media landscape. We deliver impactful campaigns that connect with people where it matters. We create seamless and personalised shopping experiences. Above all, we deliver amazing results for our partners, driven by our unshakeable desire for growth. Time after time, we change the game. SMG is home to a world-class suite of commerce advertising capabilities powered by data and cutting‑edge technology. We constantly push ourselves, our tech and our industry to discover innovative new ways to connect, sell and grow.

About the role

As a Technical Lead at SMG, you will lead a product-focused engineering squad while providing cross‑platform architectural leadership across SMG’s product engineering organisation. You will own system and delivery decisions for your team’s platforms, ensure resilient cloud deployments and operational excellence, and partner with other Technical Leads to define, govern and evolve consistent technical standards, operational practices, and tooling across SMG.

This is a hands‑on leadership role: you will design and validate architecture, unblock and mentor engineers, ensure the team delivers high‑quality, secure, observable and cost‑efficient product outcomes, and directly line‑manage engineers, including mentoring, performance reviews and career development.

What you’ll do

Work closely with the Product team to refine requirements and prepare them for specification through iterative discovery and grooming sessions.
Ensure the engineering team produces clear, fit‑for‑purpose technical design specifications in a variety of formats (architecture diagrams, technical design specs, API specifications, data matrices/spreadsheets). Provide templates, guardrails and review cycles so designs are consistent and development‑ready.
Play an active role in the platform re‑architecture: help plan how we will scale platforms to meet future growth and new business models.
Oversee development and help unblock technical challenges by contributing code, participating in debugging and joining design pairings. Act to enable engineering autonomy and rapid delivery.
Ensure our codebase follows best practices and establish high‑quality code patterns, shared libraries and reusable components to reduce duplication and increase consistency. Lead by example in code quality through code reviews and hands‑on contribution.
Conduct technical and architectural reviews that are light, time‑boxed, and constructive to validate that designs are robust, maintainable, secure, and aligned with SMG Technical Principles. Use reviews to coach engineers and to make iterative improvements.
Help drive delivery reliability and operational excellence: ensure CI/CD pipelines are defined, Infrastructure as Code is used where appropriate, deployment patterns (feature flags, canary/blue‑green) are available, and observability (metrics, logs, traces), automated alerts, runbooks and post‑incident reviews are in place.
Ensure production readiness for releases, working alongside the QA Lead to define pragmatic testing strategies and rollout plans; partner with SREs to optimise cost, scalability and platform resilience across SMG’s platforms.
Embed Security‑by‑Design into technical decisions: threat modelling, least‑privilege IAM, secrets management and compliance controls, in partnership with Security and Data teams.
Work closely with other Technical Leads to agree and adopt best practices, tooling and patterns across squads; participate in cross‑lead forums and steward SMG Technical Principles and Standards to maintain consistency across platforms.

What we’re looking for

Extensive software engineering experience, with demonstrated technical leadership in product engineering squads (senior engineer/tech lead responsibilities)
Hands‑on technical delivery: proven ability to design, review and deliver frontend user interfaces and backend services, APIs and integrations; comfortable contributing code and leading code reviews.
Experience working with Product teams to translate product goals and objectives into clear engineering work, acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes.
Experience in line‑managing or directly mentoring engineers
Hands‑on experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, and with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL or equivalent).
Experience operating services in public clouds (familiarity with AWS and/or Azure) and ability to design cloud‑agnostic solutions.
Knowledge of containers and orchestration, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or equivalent).
Experience implementing monitoring, logging, tracing, SLOs, runbooks and incident response; able to drive measurable reliability improvements.
Familiarity with threat modelling, least‑privilege IAM, secrets management and encryption practices; able to embed security considerations into design and delivery.

We're looking for people who enjoy the buzz of change, the satisfaction of building something better, and the joy of working with a close‑knit, values‑driven team. If you love variety, thrive in a fast‑paced environment, and embrace change with energy, this could be your right role.

Why SMG?

At SMG, we hire for the future, which is fast‑moving and changing shape. Do you have the potential to help shape our business? We’re looking for brilliant, diverse talent who want to grow with us - people who are curious, ambitious, and eager to learn, whether as specialists or across teams.

We value those who take ownership of their growth and bring fresh perspectives. That’s why we’re committed to equity, inclusion, and building a place where everyone feels empowered to grow. At SMG, it’s not just about filling a role but building the future together.