[Hiring] Technical Lead @Uvation

Role Description

We're looking for a hands-on Technical Lead who still loves writing code. You'll build features across our React/Next.js front ends and our Django, PHP and Magento back ends. You'll review your team's code and keep the work moving every day.

This is a player-coach role. Expect roughly half your time on hands-on development and half on reviews, planning and leading a team of 8–12 engineers. You'll work closely with Product, QA and DevOps to turn ideas into reliable features that ship on time.

What you'll do

• Build features (hands-on)
  • Design, build and ship features end to end, from React/Next.js screens to Django, PHP or Magento back-end logic and APIs.
  • Take on the hardest technical problems yourself: performance, integrations, tricky bugs.
  • Write clean, tested, maintainable code that sets the standard for the team.
• Review code and raise quality
  • Review pull requests every day, giving clear and kind feedback that helps people grow.
  • Set and maintain coding standards, branching rules and a clear definition of done.
  • Work with QA to keep production bugs low and fix critical issues fast.
• Lead the team and keep work moving
  • Break features into clear tasks, estimate effort and plan sprints with the Product Manager.
  • Support daily stand-ups, spot blockers early and clear them.
  • Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through pairing, reviews and regular one-to-ones.
  • Keep stakeholders updated on progress, risks and trade-offs in plain language.
• Shape the technical direction
  • Make architecture decisions and write them down so everyone understands why.
  • Improve CI/CD, monitoring and release processes with DevOps.
  • Help plan upgrades, reduce technical debt and keep the platform secure.

Qualifications

• React and Next.js: strong, hands-on experience building production apps with hooks, TypeScript, server-side rendering and state management (Redux Toolkit, Zustand or similar).
• Back-end (at least one, ideally two):
  • Django / Python: REST APIs (Django REST Framework), ORM, migrations, background jobs.
  • PHP / Magento 2: custom modules, plugins and observers, checkout and catalogue customisation, performance tuning.
• APIs and databases: designing REST or GraphQL APIs, and working with MySQL or PostgreSQL, query optimisation and caching (Redis).
• Code quality: writing and enforcing unit and integration tests, and running thorough, constructive code reviews.
• Engineering practices: Git workflows, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and cloud basics (Azure or AWS).
• Security: OWASP basics, safe handling of secrets and user data, and secure authentication.
• Leadership: at least 2 years leading or mentoring a team, planning sprints and keeping delivery on track.
• Communication: clear written and spoken English, and comfortable working with teams across time zones.

Good to have

• AI technologies: hands-on work with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI), RAG pipelines, vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone), or frameworks like LangChain or LlamaIndex.
• Building AI features into real products, such as chatbots, smart search, recommendations or content generation.
• Using AI coding tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) responsibly, with clear review practices for the team.
• E-commerce experience, especially Magento 2 with a headless Next.js front end.
• Kubernetes, Azure DevOps, or infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Performance work such as Core Web Vitals, caching layers, and CDNs like Azure Front Door or Cloudflare.
• Experience in Agile/Scrum teams using Jira and Confluence.

Experience and education

• 7–10 years of software development, with at least 3 years as a tech lead or senior engineer guiding others.
• A proven record of shipping full-stack features to production.
• A degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.