Technical Team Lead

Technical Team Lead

A bit of background on ELMO UK

ELMO UK is building software that helps organisations deliver better experiences for their people. We care about creating products that are useful, well-crafted and reliable, and we know great technology comes from teams that work closely together, challenge thoughtfully and keep learning.

Confidence can sometimes hold us back from applying for a job. But we'll let you in on a secret: there's no such thing as a 'perfect' candidate. ELMO UK is a place where everyone can grow. So however you identify and whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this is a role that would make you excited to come into work every day.

Our Values: What We Live By

Start With People - We remember our work affects real people, so we take the time to listen, understand and act with care.

Own It, Together - We take responsibility for our part, support each other through the messy bits, and focus on fixing things rather than finding blame.

Clear Is Kind - We speak honestly and with care. We don’t avoid difficult conversations, and we make sure people have the clarity they need to move forward.

Why This Role Is SO Important:

We’re looking for a Technical Team Lead to lead a single squad while staying deeply connected to the code. This is a hybrid role with roughly 50% hands-on senior engineering and 50% people and delivery leadership, working on our React / Node stack in close collaboration with our global engineering team in Australia.

This role is central to how we deliver high-quality software at pace. You’ll be the voice of engineering for your squad’s product domain, partnering with the Product Owner as an equal owner of what gets built and how. You’ll own the technical direction, contribute to the hardest engineering work, line-manage the team, and drive the squad’s shift to an AI-native SDLC that makes delivery faster and safer.

Key Duties & Responsibilities

Let’s be clear from the start: this isn’t a role where you sit outside the work and direct from a distance. You’ll lead through the squad, stay hands-on in the hardest technical problems, and create the conditions for others to deliver well. You are the engineering voice, the technical leader, and the person responsible for helping the squad ship predictably and grow stronger over time.

Owning squad delivery: Turning the roadmap into predictable, on-commitment shipped outcomes, while shaping and reducing scope with the Product Owner to protect what is feasible and valuable.

Leading across parallel streams: Setting direction and priorities across several streams of work, giving Seniors room to lead while providing oversight, unblocking and escalation support.

Being the voice of engineering: Partnering with the Product Owner as an equal owner of the domain, putting trade-offs on the table, and making sure what gets built is technically sound and buildable.

Staying hands-on: Contributing as a senior engineer around half the time, taking on architecture, the hardest React / Node problems and reference implementations that model the technical bar.

Owning technical direction: Leading architecture, boundaries, standards, build-vs-buy decisions, integration design and the call on when to take on technical debt and when to pay it down.

Protecting release quality and operations: Owning release readiness, progressive rollout, rollback, NFRs, SLOs, incident leadership and the wider security posture for the domain.

Driving AI-native delivery: Planning and leading the squad’s use of AI tools and agents like Claude Code and Codex, setting standards, workflows and tooling so the whole squad gets faster and safer.

Leading the people side: Running 1:1s, career development, performance management and hard conversations with clarity and care.

Hiring and onboarding well: Defining roles, running interviews, making hiring calls and helping new people become productive in a balanced squad.

Growing the layer below: Delegating real decisions so Senior engineers step up, build confidence and operate at the next level over time.

Running healthy delivery cadence: Leading ceremonies that drive action, managing capacity, risk and dependencies early, and protecting focus time from unnecessary noise.

Collaborating broadly: Representing the squad to leadership and peer Technical Lead Managers, and working closely with the global engineering team in Australia to keep architecture, standards and interfaces aligned across time zones.

Key Competencies & Behaviours

You Start with People: You protect the squad as humans first, creating psychological safety, sustainable load and careers that go somewhere.

You Own It, Together: You take responsibility for squad outcomes, support people through the messy bits, and stay accountable for commitments and delivery.

You believe that Clear Is Kind: You say the honest thing early and with care, whether that’s in 1:1s, reviews, or when a plan needs to change.

You’re a balanced leader: You’ve worked in a genuine 50/50 leadership and hands-on role and want to stay in the code, not step away from it.

You’re technically strong: You’re confident in React, Node, modern web application development, architecture, API design, integration patterns and secure application design.

You know how to raise the engineering bar: You’re an authoritative reviewer, able to review both human-written and AI-generated code at scale and turn reviews into teachable moments.

You have strong AI judgement: You know when AI helps, how to direct it well, and where human judgement still matters most.

You think in systems and outcomes: You use delivery and quality data to learn, prioritise and improve, and you focus on outcomes rather than activity.

You stay calm under pressure: You bring order when deadlines shift, incidents hit or scope changes unexpectedly.

You grow people well: You hire thoughtfully, manage performance directly and help engineers step up into bigger ownership.

Why You’ll Love it Here:

£85,000-£90,000

Flexible working – hybrid working with collaboration across the UK team and global colleagues

️25 days holiday (+ 1 extra after 3 years!) PLUS Your Birthday off!

UK Bank holidays + Christmas Eve and New Years Eve afternoons off!

Private medical insurance (PMI) - with enhanced mental health, dental & optical coverage via AXA

Employee Assistance Programme – Support when you need it

️Life Insurance – 2 x salary & Matched pension (5%) – because the future matters

2 x volunteer days per year – give back to causes that matter to you

Access to Mintago – Exclusive financial wellbeing through discounts and expert advice

️Retail discount scheme – perks and savings just for being part of our team!

The Hiring Process: Let’s Make it Personal!

Screening Call: Virtual via Google Meet with one of our team to have a friendly chat, learn more about your experience, what excites you about the role, and how you align with our people-first culture.

Competency Interview: Online you’ll meet the hiring manager and we’ll dive into your technical leadership experience, how you balance hands-on engineering with people leadership, and how you think about architecture, delivery and team growth. This is also your chance to ask us anything about the role and company.

Final Stage Interview: In person or virtual, you’ll meet the hiring manager and members of the wider team. We’ll spend time exploring your approach to leading a squad, staying close to the code, driving AI-native ways of working, and delivering high-quality outcomes through others.

Ready to join us? Apply Now!