Lead Full Stack Engineer

A GovTech scale-up delivering a live licensing platform for the Scottish public sector is hiring a Lead Full Stack Engineer to take technical ownership across their Laravel, InertiaJS and NextJS stack.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role - you’ll be writing code, making architecture calls, and setting the standard for a small, senior engineering team, while reporting directly into the CTO.

The Role

You’ll take ownership across the full stack: Laravel migrations and Eloquent models, InertiaJS admin interfaces, a NextJS citizen-facing portal, and an embeddable public register. You’ll work from spec through to PR, security review, UAT and government release sign-off - and you’ll be the technical reference point the rest of the team looks to.

This is not a role hidden behind tickets. You’ll be expected to make judgement calls, ask the right questions early, and hold the line on correctness and accessibility as much as delivery speed., * Own technical delivery of licensing workflows end-to-end, from architecture through to production

• Lead integration work with government services (OAuth2/OIDC, PKCE-based identity verification, notification and payment platforms, Companies House, DVLA, address lookup APIs)
• Set and maintain engineering standards across a strongly-typed Laravel codebase (high type coverage, static analysis, refactoring discipline)
• Guide the team’s approach to accessible React UI built against a government design system
• Lead serverless cloud deployment and operational decision-making
• Drive security design reviews, threat modelling and SAST/DAST/SCA remediation
• Own the technical approach to onboarding new verticals on a config-driven platform
• Shape and build AI-assisted features (form validation, document/eligibility checks, triage tooling)
• Mentor engineers, review code and PRs, and act as a technical escalation point

• 5+ years’ commercial full stack development experience, backend and frontend
• Track record of technical leadership - architecture decisions, mentoring, driving engineering standards
• PHP 8.3+ (constructor property promotion, readonly properties, enums, strict types)
• Laravel 11+ (or strong Symfony experience), InertiaJS or strong React
• Pest or PHPUnit - feature, unit and browser testing
• PostgreSQL - migrations, indexing, complex queries
• Experience with queues and background jobs (SQS/Redis, idempotent job design, dead-letter handling)
• NextJS 14+ (App Router), React 18+, TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS, SWR or React Query
• Accessibility experience - WCAG 2.2 AA, keyboard navigation, screen-reader testing
• Strong Git workflow, comfortable in a regulated SDLC (code review, security sign-off, audit trails)
• Clear written communication for technical documentation and stakeholder-facing decision records

Desirable

• Serverless Laravel hosting, AWS serverless stack experience
• Managed NextJS hosting, application observability tooling (e.g. Sentry)
• Cypress or Playwright, MSW for E2E mocking
• RBAC and multi-tenant, team-scoped data patterns
• GitHub Actions CI/CD, SAST/DAST tooling
• Background in a regulated sector - gov-tech, fintech or healthtech
• Prior experience leading or mentoring within an engineering team, This role sits within a regulated environment delivering services on behalf of a public sector body. Candidates must have the right to work in the UK and be willing to complete standard pre-employment background screening.

Key Skills: Full Stack Engineer, Lead Engineer, Laravel, PHP, React, NextJS, TypeScript, InertiaJS, PostgreSQL, Tailwind CSS, Technical Lead, GovTech, Edinburgh Skills

• Laravel (PHP Framework)
• Leadership
• PHP Development
• React (JavaScript)
• TypeScript

• £65,000 - £75,000 per annum
• 30 days holiday plus your birthday off
• Hybrid working (2 days office, 3 flexible)
• Enhanced maternity/paternity leave
• Company pension with employer contributions from day one
• Conference and training budget plus equipment allowance
• Modern, well-maintained codebase (Laravel 12, React 19, TypeScript, PHPStan, Pest 4, Rector)