Lead Product Software Engineer (Brightflag)

wk; Ireland; Remote; EUR 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Brightflag is seeking a Lead Product Software Engineer to shape the technical foundation of its SaaS platform in Ireland. You will own exploratory R&D, steer architectural direction, and help the team deliver production-ready systems at scale.

This hands-on leadership role combines coding excellence with people leadership in a dynamic engineering culture. You'll work with Architects, Product, Data Science and Infrastructure to drive technical direction, mentor engineers, and ensure reliable,

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• Proven track record delivering complex production systems.
• Experience with cloud environments, preferably AWS.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams (backend/frontend/QA).

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-disciplinary team of 4‑5 engineers across backend, frontend and QA.
• Define and guide technical direction to ensure scalable architecture.
• Set and maintain the quality bar for the team's output.
• Coach engineers and support their growth and performance.
• Balance hands‑on coding with leadership and delegation.
• Drive alignment with Product, Data and wider engineering org.

Skills

Team leadership

Software engineering

Project planning

Communication skills

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.

The 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 of4‑5 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

To be successful in the role, you need:

• 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 integra