Lead Product Software Engineer (Brightflag)

Wolters Kluwer; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

25 days holidays

Employer pension scheme

Tax-Saver or Cycle-to-Work

Health and life insurance

Flexible work location

Wellbeing stipend

Job summary

Brightflag, part of Wolters Kluwer, seeks a Lead Product Software Engineer to shape the technical foundation of our SaaS platform. You’ll own exploratory R&D, guide architectural direction, and lead a cross‑functional team of 4–5 engineers across backend, frontend and QA.

This role blends deep technical craft with people leadership in a product environment leveraging AI and large‑scale data. You’ll mentor engineers, collaborate with Architects, Product, Data Science and Infrastructure, and

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• Line management or team leadership accountability.
• Expert understanding of SDLC and engineering best practices.
• Proven problem-solving in production systems (performance/reliability).
• Strong software architecture, deployment topology and cloud knowledge.
• Experience with data-rich or AI-driven SaaS products.
• Ability to lead across backend, frontend and QA.
• Excellent collaboration and stakeholder communication.
• Track record of introducing improved delivery techniques.

Responsibilities

• Lead a 4–5 engineer cross-functional team across backend, frontend and QA.
• Define technical direction and ensure scalable architecture with Architects.
• Coach engineers, manage performance, and foster growth.
• Balance hands‑on coding with leadership and strategic delivery.
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science and Infrastructure to align with business goals.

Skills

10+ years experience

Line manager

SDLC expertise

Complex production systems

Software architecture

Cloud environments AWS

AI/data-driven products

Collaboration & communication

Stakeholder communication

Technical leadership

Tools

AWS

Docker

Elastic Stack

Job description

Location & Eligibility

This role offers a flexible work location across Ireland. Whether that be in the office, remote from anywhere in Ireland, or a mix of office/remote work in Ireland, you choose what works best for your lifestyle. Your time is valuable. To help with your application, we advise that regrettably we cannot offer work permit sponsorship/self sponsorship for this role.

Opportunity

Brightflag is redefining how the world's leading companies manage legal spend — and we're looking for a Lead Product Software Engineer to help shape the technical foundation that powers it all. This is a high-impact, hands‑on leadership role at the heart of our engineering organisation. You'll own exploratory R&D, guide architectural direction, and ensure that the patterns and frameworks your team develops today become the production-ready backbone of tomorrow. If you want your technical decisions to matter at scale, this is where you make that happen. You'll be embedded in a collaborative engineering culture alongside Architects, Senior Engineers, Product leadership, Data Science, and Infrastructure teams. You’ll lead a cross-disciplinary team of 4-5 engineers across backend, frontend and QA, ranging from associate to senior level. As their line manager, you’ll coach them, support their growth and take ownership of how the team delivers. You’ll be backed by our engineering Communities of Practice, and you’ll work closely with Architects, Product, Data Science and Infrastructure to help shape technical direction across the wider engineering organisation. The work is complex, the standards are high, and the people around you will push you to be better. This is a role that sits at the intersection of deep technical craft and real people leadership — in a product environment that increasingly leverages AI and large‑scale data to deliver meaningful outcomes for enterprise legal teams. You'll work on performance optimisation, distributed systems challenges, cloud‑native architectures on AWS, and emerging technology evaluation. Whether you're reviewing critical code, designing new frameworks, or mentoring a rising Senior Engineer, you'll be doing it with tools and a team that are genuinely at the cutting edge of what modern SaaS engineering looks like.

What You Will Be Doing

Lead your team to deliver high‑quality features predictably, release after release. Define and guide technical direction for your team's domain, working with Architects so the architecture scales with the business rather than being retrofitted under pressure. Set and hold the quality bar for your team's output, and own its reliability and change failure rate. Manage a team of 4–5 direct reports. Be accountable for their performance: assess against a clear bar, give direct feedback, and address underperformance early. Coach and develop engineers across backend, frontend and QA, from associate to senior level, building a culture of technical curiosity, collaboration and continuous improvement. Match work to people so every engineer grows, and build a team whose practices and people the rest of engineering learns from. Drive alignment with Product, Data and the wider engineering organisation, and represent your team's work credibly to leadership. Balance hands‑on technical work with leadership: delegate with context and trust, and don’t become the bottleneck. Use AI tools deliberately to raise the team's speed and quality.

Skills & Experience

• 10+ years in software engineering — backend, frontend or QA — with deep expertise in at least one discipline and the technical judgement to guide engineers across all three
• Experience as a line manager or team lead accountable for delivery, including giving difficult feedback and managing underperformance
• Expert‑level understanding of the software development lifecycle and engineering best practices
• A track record of solving complex technical problems in production systems — whether in performance, reliability, quality or scale
• Comprehensive understanding of software architecture, deployment topologies, and cloud environments (AWS preferred)
• Deep domain knowledge of large‑scale enterprise software or SaaS systems, ideally data‑rich or AI‑driven products
• Track record of technical innovation — designing or introducing frameworks, tools, or methodologies that improved delivery efficiency or system performance
• Strong collaboration and communication skills — able to lead your own team and influence technical direction beyond it
• Experience representing a team’s work to senior stakeholders
• Passion for continuous learning and curiosity about emerging technologies

The following are a bonus!

• Experience with Java and modern backend architectures
• Experience working in a high‑growth environment
• Familiarity with Elastic Stack, AWS event architectures (SNS/SQS/EventBridge), and containerised development environments (Docker)
• Exposure to AI‑driven systems, machine learning integrations, or large‑scale data processing pipelines

Life @ Brightflag

• Competitive salary.
• 25 days of holidays.
• Employer pension scheme.
• The Tax‑Saver or Cycle‑to‑Work Scheme.
• Comprehensive health insurance, life insurance and long term illness/income protection.
• Fully flexible work location and work patterns so you can balance life at home with life at work - come to the office, work at home… or enjoy a blend of both at your discretion.
• Wellbeing program & stipend.

We are a diverse and inclusive bunch of people. We welcome diverse perspectives and people who make every day count and strive for constant improvement. We do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race.

About Brightflag

Hi, we're Brightflag, the AI‑powered, enterprise legal management platform that helps corporate legal departments operate with greater clarity, efficiency, and control. Powered by our patented AI, which was developed with over 100,000 hours of legal and engineering expertise, and supported by our best‑in‑class Customer Success teams, Brightflag enables in‑house legal teams to streamline operations, manage matters and spend, and collaborate more effectively with outside counsel. Today, Brightflag is trusted by leading global organizations and forms part of the Legal & Regulatory division of Wolters Kluwer, a global provider of professional information, software solutions, and services. You can learn more about Brightflag here.

Company

We are innovators with impact. We provide expert software and information solutions that the world’s leading professionals rely on, in the moments that matter most. You’ll make a real difference in the lives of millions of people. Together with our customers, we help to advance sustainability, health, justice, prosperity, and commerce around the world. You can thrive at Wolters Kluwer, where diversity is core to our collective strength and high performance. Be your unique self, share your creative ideas, do your best work, and take time to grow in our caring and inclusive culture where you can belong. Wolters Kluwer reported 2025 annual revenues of €6.1 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs more than 21,000 people worldwide. Our customers work in industries that impact the lives of millions of people every single day. Our mission is to empower our professional customers with the AI‑powered solutions they need to make critical decisions, achieve successful outcomes, and increase productivity. We deliver trusted, AI‑powered expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge, proprietary content, and advanced technology to provide expert‑validated insights, automate workflows, and drive better outcomes. Today, nearly 70% of our digital revenues come from AI‑powered solutions, reflecting our strategic focus on embedding AI into professional workflows and delivering measurable productivity gains. We are committed to helping professionals navigate complexity, improve the way they work, and solve critical challenges through cloud‑based, AI‑powered platforms that integrate seamlessly into their workflows and ecosystems. Our solutions are designed to deliver impact when it matters most, especially in high‑stakes environments where accuracy and trust are essential. With a nearly 190‑year legacy, Wolters Kluwer continues to evolve its portfolio of digital solutions and services to meet the changing needs of professionals worldwide, enabling them to work faster, make smarter decisions, and deliver better outcomes. For more information about our solutions and organization, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Eligibility and Equal Opportunity

We are also committed to complying with laws requiring equal opportunity in hiring, promotion, and other employment decisions.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, transgender status, and sexual orientation), national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law, and we do not tolerate discrimination on any of these bases.

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