AI-first engineer

As the Staff Tech Lead for the Developer Experience team at Ably, you’ll report directly to our CTO and co-own the DevEx vision and strategy. You’ll lead the engineering team that owns our customer-facing web platform - our dashboard, documentation platform, and control plane - transforming it into a world-class experience for our users.

You are a senior, hands-on engineer who’s passionate about building for developers like yourself; someone who’ll obsess over the developer journey and elevate the user experience of the Ably platform. You’ll blend deep full-stack expertise with a strong product mindset, and lead a team of engineers working on initiatives where the feedback loop is immediate, because you and your team are the target users of the very ecosystem you are building.

Ably is an AI-forward organisation and this is a leadership role for an AI-first engineer. You must have confident, hands-on experience of AI-assisted development and be able to define how a team actually works with these tools day to day, and tell the difference between genuine leverage and noise.

Day to day you will

• Obsess over developer experience. You’ll have broad responsibility for elevating how developers interact with Ably’s platform and services, partnering with the DevEx PM as a unified leadership team to deliver a developer experience that becomes a reference point for the industry.
• Define and lead on AI-first working practices. You’ll be the catalyst and standard-setter for AI-enabled development across the team. You’ll leverage LLMs and AI tools to accelerate velocity, design workflows, set the guardrails and coach engineers to use them well - without compromising on engineering integrity.
• Lead technical execution and vision. You’ll lead a team of five engineers building customer-facing web applications and own the technical architecture and design decisions for our dashboard, docs platform, marketing website, and billing UI.
• Drive a product-first engineering culture. You’ll foster an environment where engineers are themselves principal stakeholders of product features, and obsess over customer outcomes. You’ll challenge the “feature factory” mentality and build a team that takes true ownership of the product.
• Thrive in a rapid iteration environment. You’ll operate in a high-velocity workspace where PMs, customers, and engineers co-create features. You’ll lead the team in working full-stack to iterate, improve, and ship improvements quickly.
• Guide engineering outcomes and quality. You’ll set and enforce high standards for code review, testing, and production readiness. You will participate in incident response and coordinate with the Infrastructure team on platform dependencies and deployments.
• Mentor and grow the team. You’ll manage performance, career development, and hiring. You will hold the team accountable for delivery commitments while providing the mentorship needed to turn engineers into product-minded leaders.

• Real, demonstrable experience leading AI-first engineering. You champion the use of AI as a productivity multiplier for the team, and have led a team that ships with LLMs and AI tooling embedded in its daily workflow. You see AI as an enabler for higher velocity and output, not a replacement for engineering judgment, and hold strong, evidence-based views on what works and what doesn’t.
• Extensive experience leading technical teams in technical B2B SaaS or API-first products, with a track record of product-minded engineering teams that take initiative and ownership of product outcomes.
• A strong software engineering background with genuine full-stack fluency. You must have enough depth across the web stack to credibly lead and challenge senior web engineers. Hands-on experience with React and TypeScript is valuable, but sound engineering judgement and technical gravitas matter more than specific frameworks.
• You have a natural empathy and strong instincts for what developer customers want because you are the target user. You are genuinely excited about building developer tools and can tap into immediate feedback loops. You understand API design, documentation, and the nuances that differentiate a great developer journey.
• Experience at a startup or growth-stage company or adaptability to thrive in a fast-paced, agile environment with a focus on rapid iteration. To be effective in this role you’ll need excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills., * Deep production experience building and shipping customer-facing web applications at scale with React and TypeScript.
• Experience delivering solutions used by software developers (developer tooling or APIs) or similar technical personas.
• An understanding of pub/sub and familiarity with distributed systems and event based architectures., If you enjoy working as part of a technology company, value open source, and love solving hard problems - then we’d love to hear from you, regardless of whether you fit the job description exactly or not. If in doubt, drop us an email; we’d be more than happy to give you some advice on your application.

We believe in fostering a culture that’s built on inclusivity and mutual respect among all team members, and we recognise that each individual is different and will want to be supported in their role in different ways. We provide a range of perks and benefits to aid folks’ development and wellbeing, allowing them to be their best selves and do great work.

• A remote-first and flexible work environment. UK-based teams come together in person once per month in our London hub (next to Old Street) and we get together as a company twice per year. Aside from that, you’re welcome to work wherever suits best for you.
• Equity. We’re a growing start-up and we want all team to members to share in the success of the company through our EMI share options programme.
• Enhanced holiday allowance. Our policy provides Ablyans with 28 days of paid annual leave (27 regular days, plus a day off to enjoy your birthday).
• Enhanced parental leave package, so that you can take the time you need to get to know your new family member, rest and recover.
• Home workstation budget of £500 on joining (and £150 p/a thereafter), so that your home office is set up to serve you well and that you have everything you need to work comfortably.
• Personal learning and development budget of £1000 annually, and 5% L&D time during working hours to focus on improving your skillset.
• Private healthcare with BUPA.
• Medical cash plan to cover a range medical and dental costs.
• Mental wellbeing coaching and counselling from Self Space.
• Monthly wellbeing budget via Juno.
• Life assurance and income protection.
• Access to Tech & Cycle to Work schemes.
• Weekly snack allowance for our end-of-week “Need To Know” meeting.
• A fully-paid one-month sabbatical after five years with Ably.