Engineering Lead

Remote Worker LTD.; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous holiday allowance

Flexible hours

Buying and selling holiday

Enhanced maternity pay

Free breakfast, fruit, and drinks

Regular socials

Job summary

The Key seeks an Engineering Lead to run a product squad building the education and compliance suite. This player-coach role combines technical leadership with line management of 2–3 engineers, delivering high-quality code in a fast-moving environment.

You will own architecture, partner with product discovery, ship each sprint, and mentor the team while fostering an engaged, AI-forward engineering culture across the squad.

Qualifications

• Hands-on senior engineer who ships with modern web stacks (TypeScript/React/Node, Python).
• AI-native practice with daily use of AI tools and mentoring others in AI-assisted coding.

Responsibilities

• Code regularly with the squad; set quality via code reviews.
• Own the squad architecture and long-term health of codebase.

Skills

Hands-on seniority

AI-native practice

Technical leadership

Product partnership

People management

Communication

TypeScript/React/Node

Python

Tools

TypeScript/React/Node

Python

Job description

Engineering Lead - Education /Ed-tech sector

Are you looking for an Engineering Lead role in a fast-growing business where people are at the heart of everything we do?

Would you like to work within a socially conscious organisation that is making a real impact in the education sector?

The company

The Key is the country’s most trusted provider of knowledge and know-how to education leaders determined to make a difference. We provide authoritative, up-to-the-minute sector intelligence, tools, services and resources that give leaders the knowledge to act.

The role

We are looking for an experienced and collaborative Engineering Lead to join our Engineering team. As an Engineering Lead, you will run one of the product squads building The Key’s compliance suite (part of Key Group, alongside GovernorHub and Robin). It is a player-coach role, combining technical leadership and line management of a small squad of 2–3 engineers. You will

Hands-On Technical Leadership

• Code regularly alongside the squad, setting the quality bar through your own work and code review.
• Own the architecture of the squad’s apps and services, including long-term codebase health and safe operability after launch.

Feasibility & Product Partnership

• Act as the squad’s Tech Lead under the Product Operating Model: a peer in weekly discovery, with feasibility sign-off on product briefs before work enters the sprint board.
• Ship tested working code to main every sprint; launch on the termly cadence.
• Join customer conversations often enough to stay in direct contact with the problem.

People Leadership

• Line-manage the squad: regular 1-2-1s, development plans, and honest performance conversations.
• Build an engaged, sustainable squad culture as part of the engineering leadership group.

AI-Native Engineering

• Work agentic-first as your default mode and drive adoption across the squad.
• Contribute to shared agentic practice across the engineering organisation (skills, tooling, codebase AI-health).

Cross-Squad Collaboration

• Coordinate with the other squad leads, the Staff Engineer, and the Platform and Core squads on shared services and dependencies.
• Consume shared AI services rather than rebuilding them, flagging cross-squad constraints early.

Requirements

The ideal person

• Hands-on seniority: a senior engineer who still ships, with strong recent experience of modern web stacks (we use TypeScript/React/Node and Python).
• AI-native practice: daily, enthusiastic use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code or similar) and a track record of raising others’ AI-assisted practice.
• Technical leadership: proven leadership of a team (tech lead, lead engineer, or manager of a small team), including architectural ownership and mentoring.
• Product partnership: comfortable in discovery, trading scope with product peers, and offering alternatives rather than blockers.
• People management: line management experience, or clear readiness for it with support.
• Communication: excellent written and spoken English, for product peers and engineers alike.

Desirable

• LLM products: experience building LLM-powered product features.
• Domain: SaaS, EdTech, or compliance experience.
• Environment: comfort with small-company pace and legacy code alongside greenfield work.

Benefits

We place huge importance on caring for and developing our people. If you join us you can expect a good work-life balance and the training and support you need to succeed in your role and continue to progress. We are a socially conscious company, but one that also likes to have fun. We offer a generous holiday allowance, flexible hours, buying and selling holiday, enhanced maternity pay, free breakfast, fruit, and drinks, regular socials and much more.