About the role
esponsibilities: Technical quality
Own the code review standard and carry meaningful review volume personally
Establish and enforce a release gate on staging — nothing reaches production without passing it
Define test coverage expectations and bring QA inside the sprint rather than downstream of it
Own technical decisions within the architecture direction set by the CTO
Delivery
Break epics into implementable work with the team; own the quality of the resulting estimates
Fix the two known estimation defects: uniform hours by work type, and lifetime-hours booking against closing sprints
Run technical refinement; identify and separate investigation spikes from implementation
Unblock developers daily; escalate structural blockers to Operations or the CTO within 24 hours
People
Mentor the two senior developers toward broader ownership; reduce concentration risk on individuals
Own onboarding for new engineers, including the current mobile developer
Contribute technical input to capability reviews, alongside the Operations Manager
Programme
Technical ownership of the Admin → Mobile programme, including the shared control row, the surface ID schema and the destination picker
Technical counterpart for the Marini / MLE workstream, including Quiz Builder sequencing
ResponsibilitiesTechnical quality
Own the code review standard and carry meaningful review volume personally
Establish and enforce a release gate on staging — nothing reaches production without passing it
Define test coverage expectations and bring QA inside the sprint rather than downstream of it
Own technical decisions within the architecture direction set by the CTO
Delivery
Break epics into implementable work with the team; own the quality of the resulting estimates
Fix the two known estimation defects: uniform hours by work type, and lifetime-hours booking against closing sprints
Run technical refinement; identify and separate investigation spikes from implementation
Unblock developers daily; escalate structural blockers to Operations or the CTO within 24 hours
People
Mentor the two senior developers toward broader ownership; reduce concentration risk on individuals
Own onboarding for new engineers, including the current mobile developer
Contribute technical input to capability reviews, alongside the Operations Manager
Programme
Technical ownership of the Admin → Mobile programme, including the shared control row, the surface ID schema and the destination picker
Technical counterpart for the Marini / MLE workstream, including Quiz Builder sequencing
Requirements
8+ years building production software; 3+ years leading a team of five or more
Strong current PHP/Laravel and Vue or equivalent modern JavaScript framework
Has introduced code review, CI or release-gate discipline to a team that did not previously have it
Has worked alongside a non-engineering delivery or operations function without absorbing or resenting it
Comfortable with legacy code and incremental improvement rather than rewrite
Flutter or mobile exposure useful, not essential
Can explain a technical constraint to a non-technical stakeholder without condescension