Job Description

We're looking for people to join the Access family, who share our passion for believing in better, and who will help us continue to grow.
Love Work. Love Life. Be You. - is central to our success and how we give our customers the freedom to do more of what's important to them.
What are we all about?
The Access Group is one of the largest UK-headquartered providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, USA and Asia Pacific. It helps more than 100,000 customers across commercial and non-profit sectors become more productive and efficient. Our products and solutions go beyond providing technology, we connect the right people with the right data, at the right time, through Access Workspace.
At Access, we are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment where everyone can thrive. If you're excited about this role, (even if your previous experience doesn't align perfectly), you might just be the perfect fit for us! We wholeheartedly believe in equality for all and the transformative power of diversity. Why not join our vibrant team where you can love what you do, love how you live, and most importantly, be authentically you? Let's make a difference together
About You:
We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Team Lead with strong senior engineering credentials to lead a small agile development team consisting of developers and testers. This role requires both technical expertise and leadership skills, as the team is responsible for developing cloud-native products using C#, .NET, React/Angular, and deploying applications on cloud platforms, such as Azure (preferred) and AWS.
As a hands-on technical leader, you will be responsible for guiding the team through the full development lifecycle, ensuring high-quality software delivery, and driving best practices in coding, testing, DevOps, and cloud deployment. You will work closely with stakeholders, foster a culture of collaboration, and support continuous improvement by leveraging CI/CD tools like Azure DevOps Pipelines and GitHub Actions.
This is an excellent opportunity for a senior/principal engineer looking to transition into a leadership role while maintaining strong technical involvement in architecture, development, and DevOps practices.
Key accountabilities and responsibilities:

• Oversee the design and development of software solutions using a variety of languages and technologies, ensuring adherence to engineering standards within the agile team.
• Lead the design of scalable, high-performance solutions using C#, .NET, React/Angular, and Azure Cloud, focusing on performance, availability, and scalability.
• Facilitate Agile ceremonies (stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, reviews), address blockers, and enhance sprint efficiency and team productivity.
• Provide technical mentorship, conduct code reviews, enforce best practices, and guide developers and testers in engineering practices and design principles.
• Lead the design, development, testing, and deployment of cloud-native applications, ensuring scalability and maintainability.
• Participate in requirements analysis, identify gaps, provide feedback on stories and acceptance criteria, and evaluate changes' scope and complexity.
• Promote TDD, BDD, and automated testing to improve application reliability.
• Ensure strong application monitoring, logging, and performance optimization for reliability and availability.
• Lead a small Agile squad, drive technical excellence, and ensure accountability for engineering deliverables.
• Ensure squad's conformance to quality gates and manage rectification plans when required.
• Guide and push for effective test automation design, practices, and coverage.
• Provide advice and guidance to stakeholders across departments, aligning technical approaches with business objectives.
• Own the team's maturity model, conducting regular assessments and supporting continuous improvement.
• Lead the squad's people management activities, including performance reviews, personal development etc.

Key performance indicators:

• Ensure on-time delivery of planned features and releases with minimal technical debt while maintaining a predictable sprint velocity.
• Drive technical excellence by enforcing best practices in .NET, C#, React/Angular, and Azure, and improving code maintainability.
• Maintain high code quality through rigorous code reviews, reducing production issues, and increasing test automation coverage.
• Facilitate Scrum ceremonies, remove blockers, and enhance team collaboration for efficient Agile execution.
• Improve test automation coverage across unit, integration, API, and UI testing, ensuring robust product quality.
• Optimize CI/CD pipelines for faster, more reliable deployments and minimize build and deployment failures.
• Enhance monitoring and alerting to proactively identify and resolve performance issues.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning by mentoring team members and encouraging knowledge sharing.
• Reduce defect leakage rate and improve early defect detection with modern testing tools and best practices.
• Maintain high team engagement and satisfaction, ensuring a productive and motivated work environment.

Skills, knowledge, experience & qualifications:

• Technical Proficiency and expertise in C#, .NET, React/Angular, and Azure Cloud services.
• Strong leadership, team mentoring, and performance management.
• Experience facilitating Agile ceremonies and managing sprints.
• Ability to design high-performance, scalable, and maintainable systems.
• Enforce clean code standards, conduct code reviews, and guide teams in best practices.
• Expertise in TDD, BDD, and test automation to ensure high-quality software.
• Experience in CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices using tools like Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions.
• Advanced knowledge of cloud-native development and Azure platform.
• Ability to align technical decisions with business goals and commercial factors.
• Strong analytical skills to make data-driven decisions and resolve blockers.
• Effective communication and alignment with cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
• Familiarity with all stages of SDLC, from design to deployment.
• Knowledge of QA processes, integrating testing into the development workflow.
• 8+ years of software development experience, with 2-3 years in a leadership or team lead role.
• Relevant certifications in Agile, Scrum, or Azure cloud technologies are a plus.

What does Access offer you?
We offer a blended approach to office working, expecting you to collaborate and connect in one of our thriving offices on average three days per week. We deliver on what we say, taking the development of our people seriously. We'll work with you to progress your success plan and provide opportunities to accelerate your career. On top of a competitive salary, our wellbeing days taking you to 25 days leave a year and a health contribution, you'll also be able to choose from a range of benefits to suit you. We're an organization that likes to give back, so you'll also have three charity days allocated to support a cause that matters to you.