Technical Lead, Software Development, Software Architect

A fast-growing EdTech / SaaS company is looking for a Tech Lead / Head of Development to lead and help scale its engineering function across web and immersive technologies.

The business builds interactive, technology-driven learning platforms that bridge the gap between theoretical and practical education. As the company continues to scale across the UK and US, this role will be critical in shaping the technical architecture, delivery capability and long-term engineering strategy.

This is a senior role for a hands‑on Lead Developer / Development Lead who enjoys balancing active development work with team leadership. You’ll take ownership of system architecture, code quality and delivery, while managing and developing a multidisciplinary team of web and Unity developers.

• Lead, manage and develop a multidisciplinary engineering team of 6+ across web and immersive (Unity) technologies.
• Balance hands‑on development with leadership responsibilities, contributing directly to web‑based projects while overseeing broader technical delivery.
• Own and evolve the platform’s system architecture, ensuring scalability, performance, maintainability and security as the product and team grow.
• Provide technical oversight and architectural guidance for Unity‑based development, supporting best practices in C# even if not coding daily.
• Design and support AI‑enabled integrations, working with external APIs and scalable integration patterns to enable current and future platform features.
• Ensure development workflows, tooling and deployment processes are efficient, reliable and well documented.
• Maintain oversight of cloud infrastructure, environments and data flows, ensuring systems are robust, secure and well managed.
• Identify technical risks, architectural gaps and delivery bottlenecks early, proposing pragmatic solutions.
• Support hiring and onboarding of new developers, working with senior leadership to identify skills or capacity gaps.
• Communicate technical decisions, architectural direction and delivery progress clearly to senior leadership and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Help define the long‑term evolution of the engineering function, including future team structures and leadership layers.

• Proven experience leading / mentoring a software development team
• Solid working knowledge of C#
• Experience designing and integrating AI‑enabled services using external APIs and modern integration patterns.
• Comfortable working across cloud‑based systems, APIs, data flows and JSON‑driven architectures.
• Experience running code reviews, mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards across a team.
• Strong delivery mindset, with experience collaborating closely with project or product management.
• Willing to remain hands‑on while the team scales, with a clear interest in growing into a larger leadership role over time.
• EMI Share Scheme
• Hybrid working:
  Monday and Friday from home, Tuesday–Thursday in Manchester.
• Flexible working hours (7.5-hour day, 08:00–09:00 start).
• 23 days holiday plus bank holidays (holiday can be negotiated)
• Collaborative, inclusive and ambitious company culture.