Engineering Lead

theaccessgroup; India; Hybrid; INR 2,600,000 - 4,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Access Hospitality is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to balance hands-on coding with people leadership, shaping architecture and engineering standards across two streams.

You will mentor up to eight engineers, drive AI-enabled development, collaborate with Product, and ensure delivery while maintaining quality and security across distributed teams.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering teams and delivering production software.
• Ability to define and enforce code quality, testing and security standards.
• Strong architectural and design-skill footprint with pragmatic decision making.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction of your stream, architecture decisions and coding standards.
• Own performance, development and wellbeing of engineers across streams; conduct regular 1:1s.
• Manage sprint ceremonies, planning quality and backlog health; balance feature delivery with technical debt.

Skills

Hands-on coding

Technical leadership

People management

Architecture decisions

AI adoption

Tools

CI/CD

Observability

Security practices

AI tooling

Job description

We're looking for people to join the Access family, who share our passion for believing in better, and who will help us continue to grow.

Love Work. Love Life. Be You. - is central to our success and how we give our customers the freedom to do more of what's important to them.

What does Access offer you?

We offer a blended approach to office working, encouraging you to collaborate and connect in one of our thriving offices. We deliver on what we say, taking the development of our people seriously. We'll work with you to progress your success plan and provide opportunities to accelerate your career.

Position Summary

The Lead Software Engineer is a '50:50' role. Half the time you are in the code - shipping production software, holding the technical bar and setting the standard the team follows. The other half you are leading the people, the process and the architecture - running a high-performing engineering stream and developing the engineers within it.

You’ll be joining a small, value-aligned structure: up to two streams of four engineers each, with Product cover per stream. QA is owned by engineering - there is no handoff to a separate team, and that is by design.

The F&B Software Company sits within Access Hospitality, with engineering teams distributed globally, and powers many millions of guest experiences every day. The portfolio includes ResDiary, Dish Cult, DesignMyNight, Collins, Tonic, Soda, Wireless Social, Paytronix, Paytronix Online Ordering, QikServe Digital Ordering, Kiosk, QikServe Connect, Access EPOS, Newbridge POS, GuestPOS, Acteol, Trail, Maintain, RotaReady and CPL.

AI augmentation is a pre-requisite for this role, not an optional extra. Access has invested in cutting-edge AI tooling and we expect every engineer and leader to use AI pervasively to accelerate outcomes, raise quality, and shorten feedback loops. Lead Software Engineers are expected to model this behaviour, embed it into team standards and hold the bar for AI adoption across their streams. If you are not already working this way, you will need to get there fast.

Key Accountabilities and Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Spend approximately half your time as a hands-on engineer: writing, reviewing and shipping production code to the same standard you hold your team to.
• Own the technical direction of your stream - architecture decisions, technology choices, design patterns and code standards.
• Set and maintain the engineering quality bar: code review standards, test coverage expectations, CI/CD discipline, observability and security practice.
• Identify and address technical debt proactively, balancing pragmatism with the long-term health of the codebase.
• Contribute to platform-wide architectural decisions, feeding your stream's experience and evidence back into broader engineering strategy.

People Leadership

• Own the performance, development and wellbeing of up to eight engineers across your streams.
• Run regular 1:1s, set clear goals, and give direct, actionable feedback - both positive and developmental.
• Manage the full performance cycle for your engineers: goal setting, mid-year reviews, end-of-year assessments and, where necessary, performance improvement plans.
• Identify growth opportunities for each engineer and actively create the conditions for them to progress.
• Hire well - contribute to recruitment, assess candidates rigorously, and take accountability for the quality of who joins your team.
• Model the behaviours and working practices you expect from the team, including AI adoption, communication standards and engineering discipline.

Delivery & Process

• Keep your streams delivering consistently - predictable throughput, low change failure rate, fast recovery when things go wrong.
• Own the engineering process within your streams: sprint ceremonies, planning quality, backlog health and cross-team dependency management.
• Work closely with Product to balance feature delivery against technical investment, making the trade-offs visible and explicit rather than absorbed silently.
• Remove blockers for your engineers - upscale where needed, resolve where you can, and protect the team's ability to focus.
• Ensure incidents are handled well: fast triage, clear communication, thorough post-mortems, and unique failures - the same class of incident should not recur.

Key Performance Indicators

Technical

• Software owned by your streams meets reliability, latency and availability targets in production.
• Lead time for change trends downwards; deployment frequency trends upwards across your streams.
• Change failure rate stays under 15%; MTTR trends downwards.
• Critical and high security vulnerabilities patched within agreed SLAs (1 day / 14 days).
• AI tooling is a demonstrable, routine part of your workflow and embedded visibly in team standards.

People

• Engineers in your streams have clear goals, regular feedback and a development plan they understand.
• Regrettable attrition is low; engineers in your streams are growing and progressin