Lead Software Engineer - Python, React & AI

Intelligent Talent is recruiting experienced Lead Software Engineers (Tech Leads / Technical Lead) for an established international professional services organisation investing in its internal software engineering and AI capabilities.

The business is developing new AI-powered products to change how complex legal and document-intensive work is delivered. This isn’t a role focused on maintaining legacy applications or managing developers from a distance. It’s about building brand new products and software, making technical decisions and taking responsibility for getting products into production.

You’ll spend around 70-80% of your time hands-on, working with Python, React, TypeScript and modern AI technologies. Alongside the engineering work, you’ll provide technical leadership to a scrum team, influence architecture and help establish the engineering standards needed as the capability grows. The role

The organisation is expanding its engineering teams to support increased investment in agentic AI and internally developed software products.

You’ll take technical ownership of delivery, working alongside software engineers, product owners, architects and the wider cloud and platform teams.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Leading the technical delivery of new software products, from design and development through to deployment and ongoing support.
• Writing production-quality code using Python, TypeScript and React.
• Designing and building applications that integrate Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative AI and agentic capabilities.
• Making architectural and low-level design decisions, balancing technical quality with practical delivery requirements.
• Mentoring engineers and improving development practices through code reviews, pairing and technical guidance.
• Working directly with users and product owners to understand requirements and translate them into working software.
• Improving engineering standards across testing, CI/CD, security and production reliability.
• Using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code and OpenAI Codex to improve engineering productivity without compromising code quality.

The team takes responsibility for the software it builds and runs. You’ll need to think beyond the initial release and consider performance, support and long-term maintainability. The technology

The core engineering environment includes:

• Backend: Python
• Frontend: React, TypeScript and JavaScript
• Cloud: Microsoft Azure
• Databases: PostgreSQL and Cosmos DB
• AI: Production LLM applications, agentic AI, Claude and OpenAI models
• AI development tooling: Claude Code and OpenAI Codex
• Workflow orchestration: Temporal
• Infrastructure: Terraform and Bicep, supported by an internal DevOps and platform engineering team

The work includes processing substantial volumes of legal documents and building AI-powered services that need to operate reliably in production., If you’re a hands-on Lead Software Engineer or Tech Lead working with modern software and AI technologies, and want to understand more about the products, team and technical challenges, we’d be happy to talk through the role.

We’re particularly interested in speaking with senior software engineers and existing Tech Leads who enjoy building software and want meaningful technical ownership.

You’ll need:

• Strong commercial software engineering experience, particularly with Python, React and TypeScript.
• Experience designing, building and supporting applications in production.
• Practical experience integrating LLMs or Generative AI into production software.
• A good understanding of agentic AI, including its capabilities, limitations and the controls needed to use it responsibly.
• Experience providing technical leadership, mentoring engineers and influencing architecture and engineering decisions.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including testing, code quality, CI/CD and secure development.
• Experience building cloud-based applications. Azure is used extensively, although AWS or GCP backgrounds are also relevant.
• The ability to work directly with users, understand business problems and make sensible engineering trade-offs.

You’ll be comfortable writing and reviewing code independently, while also knowing how to use AI development tools effectively.

Experience with Temporal, infrastructure as code, graph databases, high-volume document processing or more advanced agentic AI patterns would be useful, but isn’t essential across the board. The business, We’re open to engineers from different sectors. Experience in SaaS, fintech or other product-led engineering environments would be particularly relevant. Previous legal technology experience isn’t required.

• Salary: £80,000-£110,000, depending on experience.
• Discretionary annual bonus scheme.
• Pension: 5% employer contribution, subject to a minimum 3% employee contribution.
• Annual leave: 25 days plus bank holidays, increasing with service, with the option to buy or sell additional days.
• Private medical insurance through Bupa.
• Life assurance of up to four times salary and income protection cover.
• £300 annual wellbeing allowance, employee assistance programme and additional health and lifestyle benefits.
• Professional development and learning opportunities.

Benefits are subject to scheme terms and eligibility.

Our client is an established international professional services organisation with a growing internal software engineering function.

Its technology teams are developing AI-powered products for use across the business and by its clients. This is an area receiving increased investment, with a clear intention to build more capability internally.

The engineering function is still developing, so there’s scope to influence technical decisions, improve development practices and help shape how new products are delivered.