Lead Software Engineer

Role: Lead Software Engineer
Location: Milton Keynes (Hybrid – Once a Month On-Site)
Salary: £60,000 – £67,000
Network IT are partnering with a large, service-focused organisation undergoing significant modernisation across its digital and engineering landscape. We’re seeking an experienced Lead Engineer to drive technical excellence, shape modern engineering practices, and provide end-to-end leadership across complex software and systems delivery.
This role is ideal for a proven technical leader who enjoys balancing architecture, hands-on engineering, mentoring, and driving continuous improvement. You’ll help define the technical roadmap, uplift engineering standards, and support the delivery of secure, scalable, and high-performing applications across cloud and on-prem environments.
Role Overview and Responsibilities
As a Lead Engineer, you’ll take technical ownership of products and platforms, leading multidisciplinary engineering teams to deliver robust, secure, and scalable solutions.
Key responsibilities include:

- Leading day-to-day performance, motivation, and objectives for engineering teams.
- Mentoring and developing engineers, supporting skills growth and professional development.
- Driving engineering best practice across DevOps, agile delivery, tooling, automation, testing, and CI/CD.
- Designing and architecting complex systems, ensuring scalable, cost-effective, and maintainable solutions.
- Owning local architecture decisions, collaborating closely with solution architects and product leads.
- Overseeing full lifecycle delivery including design, development, integration, configuration, and testing.
- Leading data modelling and database design in partnership with data architects.
- Managing supplier relationships and contributing to effective resource allocation.
- Promoting DevOps culture, automation, observability, and practical application of AI where beneficial.
- Supporting continuous improvement and the uplift of engineering standards across the wider organisation.

Essential Skills and Experience
To succeed in this role, you will bring:

- Expertise in systems architecture, distributed systems, microservices, cloud platforms (AWS/Azure), and API-led design.
- Proven background in software engineering, including coding, debugging, reviews, and modern development practices.
- Strong technical leadership experience across software and systems engineering.
- Excellent people management and mentoring skills, including the ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
- Deep understanding of testing approaches including TDD, automated testing, and non-functional testing.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, infrastructure-as-code, and automation.
- Strong data and database design skills.
- Familiarity with modern digital architectures (e.g., MACH – Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless).