Technical Lead (Digital)

Warner Hotels; Hemel Hempstead; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus (up to 20%)

Pension scheme: 3% employer, 5%员工

25 days annual leave + bank holidays

Job summary

Warner Hotels is building guest-facing digital products on a modern, cloud-native stack. The Digital Technical Lead is the technical heart of delivery: providing leadership, solution design, and engineering quality standards across internal engineers and nearshore partners.

Reporting to the Head of Digital & Data Delivery, the Digital Technical Lead sets engineering standards, drives technical decisions, reviews architectures, and contributes hands-on coding.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience in modern web architectures (ASP.NET/.NET, React/Next.js).
• Proven ability to lead architectural design and technical decision-making.
• Experience delivering cloud-native digital products with secure, scalable architectures.
• Strong track record mentoring engineers and enforcing engineering standards.
• Excellent communication of technical trade-offs to product and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for digital engineering delivery, setting standards for code quality, testing, CI/CD, and release management.
• Lead architecture and solution design for new digital features and products with alignment to broader architecture.
• Conduct code reviews and architecture assessments with nearshore partner teams to meet Warner's standards.

Skills

Technical leadership

Code reviews

Architecture design

Mentoring

Communication

Stakeholder communication

Problem solving

Hands-on coding

Tools

ASP.NET

.NET 8

C#

React

Next.js

TypeScript

REST/GraphQL

AWS

CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

Optimizely

Bloomreach

LangChain

OWASP

PCI-DSS

Job description

Warner Hotels is building guest-facing digital products on a modern, cloud-native stack — the MyWarner guest portal, Club Warner loyalty platform, WarnerHotels.co.uk, and an AI concierge and booking assistant. The Digital Tech Lead is the technical heart of that delivery: the most senior hands-on digital engineer in the team, providing technical leadership, solution design, and engineering quality standards across both internal engineers and nearshore partners.

Reporting to the Head of Digital & Data Delivery, the Digital Technical Lead will set and enforce engineering standards, lead technical decision-making for digital products, conduct architecture and code reviews, and actively contribute to delivery as a practitioner. This is not a purely managerial role — you will write code, review pull requests, and remain deeply embedded in the technical detail.

You will work closely with the Head of Digital & Data Delivery, Product Delivery Managers, and the Integration Architect to ensure that Warner's digital products are built to a standard that is scalable, secure, and maintainable — and that the nearshore engineering partner (Frontline) is performing to the required level.

Key Responsibilities will include:

Technical Leadership

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for all digital engineering delivery — setting standards for code quality, testing, CI/CD, and release management.
• Lead architecture and solution design for new digital features and products — working with the Integration Architect to ensure alignment with the wider architecture.
• Conduct code reviews and architecture assessments with nearshore partner teams, ensuring outputs meet Warner's engineering standards.

Engineering Delivery

• Actively contribute to digital engineering delivery — writing code, building features, and shipping working software alongside the product engineering team.
• Own the technical definition of user stories — breaking down business requirements into well-scoped engineering tasks and acceptance criteria.
• Introduce and embed modern engineering practices: CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, containerisation, code quality gates.

Partner Oversight

• Act as the technical accountability lead for nearshore digital engineering partners— reviewing architectures, assessing quality, and ensuring delivery meets Warner's standards.
• Identify and address performance gaps in partner engineering quality and velocity.

Team Capability

• Mentor and develop the internal Data & Digital Product Engineers in digital engineering best practices.
• Contribute to Warner's engineering capability build — including tooling, practices, and onboarding standards for new engineers.

The Digital Technical Lead will need to have the following experience

Technical Toolkit

• Modern web engineering: ASP.Net, .NET8, C#, React, Next.js, TypeScript, REST and GraphQL APIs.
• Cloud: AWS — Lambda, API Gateway, S3, CloudFront, Amazon Connect.
• DevOps: CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent), containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes).
• CMS and digital experience platforms: Optimizely, Bloomreach, or equivalent.
• AI/ML integration: LLM orchestration (LangChain), conversational AI, WhatsApp Business API.
• Security and compliance: OWASP standards, PCI-DSS awareness.
• A Practitioner First: You write code and review code — you lead by doing, not just directing.
• Technically Exacting: You set high engineering standards and hold both internal engineers and partners accountable to them.
• A Communicator: You can explain technical trade-offs to product managers and business stakeholders clearly.
• A Builder: You are energised by creating new capabilities — frameworks, pipelines, and products — not just maintaining what exists.

You'll need experience in digital engineering roles, with significant time in a technical lead or principal engineer capacity, as well as proven hands-on experience in modern web architectures (Reach/.NET or React/Next.js, API-first design). You'll also need experience in leading engineering quality and standards across hybrid engineering models.

Consumer-facing digital product experience: eCommerce, hospitality, travel, or retail preferred.

The benefits of working with us

• Annual Bonus: up to 20% of salary, based on your personal and business performance
• Pension scheme: 3% employer, 5% employee
• 25 days annual leave per year + flexible 8 bank holidays + you can purchase up to 5 days additional leave per year
• 20% discount at breaks at Warner, Butlins & Haven + additional discounts during your stays
• Help @ Hand from Unum - including virtual GP, Physiotherapy support, Mental Health sessions
• Life Assurance
• Free Car Parking
• Electric Vehicle scheme
• Enhanced Family Friendly policies
• Refer a friend scheme
• Aslan: Our Reward & recognition portal includes access to a financial wellbeing platform
• Access to a discounts platform including a points based discount plan to increase your retail discounts
• Employee Assistance Programme
• L&G Care Concierge
• Glow Getters and Long Service Awards

We genuinely care about every candidate's experience during the recruitment process and are here to provide support where we can. If you require any assistance or reasonable adjustments while applying, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at: [e-mail]