Lead Software Engineer / Technical Lead

We're looking for a hands-on Lead Software Engineer to take technical ownership of the SOJO platform. This is the technical lead for our product: you'll make the architectural calls, write the code, own the infrastructure and shape where our technology goes next.

It's a broad, end-to-end role with genuine autonomy. You'll touch every layer of the stack - from the customer-facing booking flow, to the data pipeline, to the AI features we're rolling out. You'll work directly with our leadership team, who set the business goals; how we deliver them is yours to own. You'll be our senior technical decision-maker from day one, with the opportunity to shape and grow the engineering team as we scale.

This role suits a strong, pragmatic builder who wants ownership and breadth over narrow specialism - someone happy to be the person the business trusts to get things built and keep them running.

This is an immediate requirement. We need someone in post as soon as possible and no later than 1 August 2026, so we're prioritising candidates who are available to start quickly.

What you'll do

• Own the platform end to end - architect, build, deploy and maintain a production system serving 10,000+ customers.
• Make the technical decisions - choose the frameworks, data models and infrastructure that turn business goals into working product.
• Build across the full stack - Python and JavaScript/TypeScript, with React on the front end and FastAPI on the back end (PayloadCMS/Next.js, MongoDB).
• Own cloud infrastructure and DevOps - AWS (EC2, RDS, Lambda, ECS, App Runner, Amplify), monitoring, SSL and reliability.
• Maintain and develop the data pipeline - end-to-end ownership across Airbyte, dbt, BigQuery and Metabase.
• Lead AI/ML feature development - customer-facing booking assistants (text and vision), studio triage vision tooling and AI-assisted customer service.
• Own security and GDPR compliance across the platform.
• Provision and manage all physical technology hardware across the business.
• Keep the platform stable and performant - triage, debug and resolve production issues.
• Shape the technical roadmap and help build out the engineering team as the company grows.

Essential

• A minimum of 5 years' professional software engineering experience.
• Strong hands-on full-stack experience with Python and JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Comfortable owning both back-end (FastAPI or similar) and front-end (React) development.
• Solid DevOps and cloud infrastructure experience, ideally on AWS.
• Experience and proficiency using AI coding tools (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot).
• A track record of making architectural decisions and owning systems end to end.
• Confident working independently - happy to be the person who decides how things get built and takes responsibility for delivery.
• Pragmatic and delivery-focused, and comfortable in a fast-moving startup environment.
• Based within commuting distance of London (Stoke Newington), able to work on-site 3+ days per week, and available to start by 1st August 2026.

Nice to have

• Previous startup experience - ideally at an early-stage or scale-up company (strongly preferred).
• Experience building LLM/AI features in production - agents, vision, or RAG.
• Data / analytics engineering experience (dbt, BigQuery, Airbyte, Metabase).
• Headless CMS (PayloadCMS/Next.js) and MongoDB experience.
• E-commerce or payments experience., * Software Engineering: 5 years (required)

Pulled from the full job description

• Employee discount
• Employee stock ownership plan
• Casual dress
• Cycle to work scheme, * A salary of £70,000, plus equity.
• Hybrid working based in London (Stoke Newington) - 3+ days per week on-site.
• Total technical ownership and autonomy - your decisions, your platform.
• The chance to build production AI features from the ground up, with modern tooling.
• A front-row seat at a fast-growing, mission-driven startup where your work directly drives commercial results.

Interview process

• Intro call
• Take-home exercise
• Technical conversation
• Onsite final

Pay: £70,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee discount
• Employee stock ownership plan

SOJO is a UK-based startup on a mission to make clothing alterations, repairs and tailoring effortless - as simple as ordering a takeaway. Customers book online, our studio and network of expert tailors do the work, and our technology powers the entire experience end to end. We've grown fast. Order volumes and service revenue have scaled more than 15x over the last three years, we serve over 10,000 active customers, and we have operated concession locations across the UK and Europe. We run a lean, modern engineering stack and are actively building AI into the core of our product and operations.