Lead Software Engineer

The Lead Software Engineer is responsible for all software deliveries across the Valorem Group, ensuring that every system, application, and service meets high standards of quality, security, scalability, and maintainability. You will provide technical leadership across multiple teams, influence architectural direction, and ensure delivery approaches align with business priorities and organisational strategy. This is a hands-on leadership role that combines deep technical expertise with coaching, mentoring, and cross-functional coordination. You will set the engineering standard, contribute to complex areas of the codebase, and drive predictable, high-quality delivery across the group., Technical Direction & Architecture

• Provide technical leadership across all software deliveries within the Valorem Group
• Define and uphold engineering standards, architectural patterns and best practices
• Lead architectural decisions and ensure alignment with long-term strategy
• Ensure technical debt is visible, prioritised and reduced

Hands-on Development

• Contribute to complex and high impact areas of the codebase
• Support implementation through pairing, code reviews and technical workshops
• Set high standards for code quality, maintainability and security

Quality, Testing & Reliability

• Ensure strong unit test coverage across all codebases
• Improve quality gates in CI/CD and strengthen release readiness
• Lead incident investigations, root cause analysis and long term corrective actions
• Promote secure development and safe handling of data

Delivery Leadership & Execution

• Lead delivery across multiple squads, aligning sequencing and integration
• Break down complex initiatives into deliverable increments
• Provide accurate reporting and forecasting on progress and risks
• Remove blockers and ensure smooth technical execution across teams

Collaboration and Stakeholder Influence

• Work closely with product owners, architects, QA, DevOps and business stakeholders
• Influence requirements and design decisions to ensure technical and business alignment
• Strengthen cross-team communication and collaboration

Mentoring, Coaching and Capability Building

• Mentor developers across levels, improving coding, design and delivery skills
• Promote knowledge sharing through reviews, pairing and technical sessions
• Support onboarding and career development within the engineering team

Process & Continuous Improvement

• Identify systemic issues in engineering workflows and lead improvement initiatives
• Enhance build pipelines, frameworks and developer experience
• Lead initiatives that increase quality, efficiency and delivery predictability

Documentation

• Ensure architectural decisions, system designs and operational documentation are well maintained

• Promote high quality PR descriptions, technical notes and design documentation, * Seeks feedback and applies it to improve leadership and technical depth

• Learns and adapts to different business viewpoints across the Valorem Group

• Stays current with industry trends and guides adoption of valuable improvements

• Communicates progress, risks, and blockers clearly and proactively

• Maintains transparency, accountability and consistent follow-through

• Maintains professionalism under pressure and supports constructive team dynamics, * An Age Friendly Employer, welcoming applications from experienced professionals and supporting age diversity.
• A supporter of the Armed Forces Covenant, encouraging applications from veterans, reservists, and their families.
• A Disability Confident Employer, guaranteeing interviews for disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria and ensuring an inclusive recruitment process.
• A Mindful Employer, promoting mental health awareness and fair recruitment practices in line with the Equality Act 2010.

Applicants must be UK residents and have permission to work in the UK. A basic DBS check is required for this role.

Pay: £60,000.00-£70,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company events
• Cycle to work scheme
• Enhanced maternity leave
• Enhanced paternity leave
• Referral programme

• Over 7 years of hands on software development experience delivering production systems
• Proven experience leading engineering delivery across multiple workstreams or teams
• Demonstrated experience mentoring developers and raising engineering capability

Technical Knowledge

• Deep understanding of software architecture, design patterns, long term system design and technical trade offs
• Strong capability in writing clean, maintainable, secure code and managing technical debt
• Expertise in performance optimisation, system reliability, observability, and operational readiness
• Strong proficiency in relevant programming languages and frameworks used within the organisation
• API design, integration techniques, and event-driven and messaging patterns
• Distributed systems and microservices
• SQL/NoSQL data modelling, database performance, and data integrity
• Secure coding practices, threat modelling, and data privacy requirements
• Unit testing strategies
• Ability to shape technical roadmaps and influence architectural decisions

Tools & Technologies

• Advanced knowledge of Git workflows, PR standards and code review practices
• Experience configuring and improving CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
• Proficiency with monitoring, logging, tracing, and diagnostics tools
• Awareness of AWS, containerisation and infrastructure concepts sufficient for technical leadership
• Experience with Agile work tracking tools such as Azure DevOps or Jira.

Our environment: AWS, C, Python, React, PHP, JavaScript, Docker, Jira

Project & Delivery Management

• Ability to plan, coordinate, and deliver technical work across multiple teams
• Competence in estimation, dependency management, capacity planning and risk management.
• Clear stakeholder management, expectation-setting and progress reporting
• Experience leading cross-functional delivery with product, QA, DevOps and architecture.

Personal Attributes

• Strong communicator, able to influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Skilled at aligning teams around shared technical direction
• Able to analyse and solve complex technical problems with clarity
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities
• Drive to investigate issues deeply and identify root causes
• Willingness to uphold engineering standards in challenging situations
• Collaborative and dependable, offering help and asking for support when required
• Strong mentoring and coaching capabilities

We are looking for someone with:

Engineering Mindset

• Designs with scalability, maintainability and operational excellence in mind

• Raises risks early with clear recommendations

• Challenges assumptions constructively to strengthen technical outcomes

• Takes ownership of improvement initiatives that enhance product quality and engineering efficiency

• Applies a strong business focus, aligning engineering strategy with business goals, customer outcomes and organisational priorities

Pulled from the full job description

• Referral programme
• Annual leave
• Employee assistance programme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Discounted gym membership
• Company events

• Enhanced maternity leave, * Builds strong working relationships across engineering, product, QA, DevOps, and business teams

• Fosters a collaborative, supportive, and quality-driven engineering culture

What’s In It For You?

• Hybrid working post-training (3 days a week in office, 2 day at home)
• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, this increases with your service
• Refer and Earn - Employee referral scheme and bonuses
• Family Friendly - Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay and gift hampers for new parents
• Employee Experiences - Social events and regular engagement activities, such as Christmas and Summer parties, in office events and competitions and long service awards. Activities for key inclusion events and wellbeing webinars. Internal employee recognition schemes such as employee of the month and end of year awards
• Training & Development Opportunities - A huge range of internal and external training available, including apprenticeships (levels 3,4 & 5)
• ESG & Sustainability - Cycle to work scheme, volunteering days, travel discounts and part of Manchester Liftshare Community platform
• Exclusive access to Westfield Health access to different healthcare benefits and services, giving you money back towards essential health costs such as optical and dental treatments. Also included - 24hr DoctorLine service, Gym Discounts, offers on a wide range of goods and services from hundreds of leading retailers, restaurants, and destinations.
• Mental health and Wellbeing Support - Employee Assistance Program providing up to 6 sessions of structured counselling and access to a variety of wellbeing resources including webinars, Health Checks, and podcasts. Access to mental health first aiders and much more
• Free breakfast, fresh fruit and tea & coffee provided daily

At Dals, we enable people and organisations to tackle critical language challenges every day. Our interpreting and translation services cover more than 500 languages, including BSL and other non-spoken languages. We connect clients and their service users with crucial expertise whenever and wherever they need it-because the world is a better, fairer place when everyone is understood.

Our people are our future, and we take care of them. Through community partnerships and social value initiatives, we continuously work to ensure Dals has a positive impact on the world.