Technical Lead (Digital)

Warner Hotels is building guest-facing digital products on a modern, cloud-native stack - the MyWarner guest portal, Club Warner loyalty platform, WarnerHotels.co.uk, and an AI concierge and booking assistant. The Digital Tech Lead is the technical heart of that delivery: the most senior hands-on digital engineer in the team, providing technical leadership, solution design, and engineering quality standards across both internal engineers and nearshore partners.

Reporting to the Head of Digital & Data Delivery, the Digital Technical Lead will set and enforce engineering standards, lead technical decision-making for digital products, conduct architecture and code reviews, and actively contribute to delivery as a practitioner. This is not a purely managerial role - you will write code, review pull requests, and remain deeply embedded in the technical detail.

You will work closely with the Head of Digital & Data Delivery, Product Delivery Managers, and the Integration Architect to ensure that Warner’s digital products are built to a standard that is scalable, secure, and maintainable - and that the nearshore engineering partner (Frontline) is performing to the required level.

Key Responsibilities will include:

Technical Leadership

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for all digital engineering delivery - setting standards for code quality, testing, CI/CD, and release management.
• Lead architecture and solution design for new digital features and products - working with the Integration Architect to ensure alignment with the wider architecture.
• Conduct code reviews and architecture assessments with nearshore partner teams, ensuring outputs meet Warner’s engineering standards.

Engineering Delivery

• Actively contribute to digital engineering delivery - writing code, building features, and shipping working software alongside the product engineering team.
• Own the technical definition of user stories - breaking down business requirements into well-scoped engineering tasks and acceptance criteria.
• Introduce and embed modern engineering practices: CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, containerisation, code quality gates.

Partner Oversight

• Act as the technical accountability lead for nearshore digital engineering partners- reviewing architectures, assessing quality, and ensuring delivery meets Warner’s standards.
• Identify and address performance gaps in partner engineering quality and velocity.

Team Capability

• Mentor and develop the internal Data & Digital Product Engineers in digital engineering best practices.
• Contribute to Warner’s engineering capability build - including tooling, practices, and onboarding standards for new engineers.

• Modern web engineering: ASP.Net, .NET8, C#, React, Next.js, TypeScript, REST and GraphQL APIs.
• Cloud: AWS - Lambda, API Gateway, S3, CloudFront, Amazon Connect.
• DevOps: CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent), containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes).
• CMS and digital experience platforms: Optimizely, Bloomreach, or equivalent.
• AI/ML integration: LLM orchestration (LangChain), conversational AI, WhatsApp Business API.
• Security and compliance: OWASP standards, PCI-DSS awareness.
• A Practitioner First: You write code and review code - you lead by doing, not just directing.
• Technically Exacting: You set high engineering standards and hold both internal engineers and partners accountable to them.
• A Communicator: You can explain technical trade-offs to product managers and business stakeholders clearly.
• A Builder: You are energised by creating new capabilities - frameworks, pipelines, and products - not just maintaining what exists.

You’ll need experience in digital engineering roles, with significant time in a technical lead or principal engineer capacity, as well as proven hands-on experience in modern web architectures (Reach/.NET or React/Next.js, API-first design). You’ll also need experience in leading engineering quality and standards across hybrid engineering models.

Consumer-facing digital product experience: eCommerce, hospitality, travel, or retail preferred.

• Annual Bonus: up to 20% of salary, based on your personal and business performance
• Pension scheme: 3% employer, 5% employee
• 25 days annual leave per year + flexible 8 bank holidays + you can purchase up to 5 days additional leave per year
• 20% discount at breaks at Warner, Butlins & Haven + additional discounts during your stays
• Help @ Hand from Unum - including virtual GP, Physiotherapy support, Mental Health sessions
• Life Assurance
• Free Car Parking
• Electric Vehicle scheme
• Enhanced Family Friendly policies
• Refer a friend scheme
• Aslan: Our Reward & recognition portal includes access to a financial wellbeing platform
• Access to a discounts platform including a points based discount plan to increase your retail discounts
• Employee Assistance Programme
• L&G Care Concierge
• Glow Getters and Long Service Awards