Lead Engineer - Applications

Are you a hands-on engineering leader with experience building scalable applications, backend systems and AI-powered products?

Join an ambitious early-stage technology company building the next generation of intelligent productivity and workflow applications. This is a unique opportunity to lead the application engineering function, shaping the architecture, reliability and scalability of products that combine AI capabilities with exceptional user experiences.

Location: Remote / Hybrid
Employment Type: Full-time
Salary Range: £80,000 - £90,000 GBP per annum

About The Role

As Lead Engineer, Applications, you will own the engineering layer that transforms AI capabilities into reliable, production-ready products.

You'll define application architecture across backend services, APIs and client applications, while providing technical leadership to a small team of senior engineers. This is a hands-on role requiring strong technical judgement, architectural thinking and a passion for building high-quality systems.

You will work closely with machine learning and product teams to ensure AI capabilities are translated into robust user experiences that are scalable, observable and reliable.

What You'll Own

Application Architecture & Engineering

• Own application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile and desktop platforms.
• Design scalable systems supporting AI-powered workflows and user experiences.
• Build APIs, services and abstractions that connect AI capabilities to product functionality.
• Ensure architecture remains maintainable, reliable and scalable as products evolve.
• Drive technical excellence across application development.

Workflow & Reliability Systems

• Design systems supporting:
  • Workflow orchestration
  • State management
  • Tool integrations
  • Retry mechanisms
  • Fallback strategies
  • Failure recovery
• Ensure AI-powered experiences behave predictably under real-world conditions.
• Improve resilience across complex user journeys and long-running tasks.

Engineering Leadership

• Lead and mentor a small team of senior engineers.
• Conduct code reviews and design reviews.
• Raise engineering standards across architecture, implementation and operational practices.
• Support technical decision-making and prioritisation.
• Foster a culture of accountability, quality and ownership.

Production Excellence

• Establish strong foundations for:
  • Monitoring
  • Observability
  • Alerting
  • Testing
  • Operational readiness
• Ensure systems remain stable under real-world workloads.
• Improve latency, performance and reliability over time.
• Drive best practices around operational excellence and production support.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with machine learning, product and design teams.
• Translate AI capabilities into customer-facing product features.
• Balance technical complexity with usability and business requirements.
• Make pragmatic trade-offs between reliability, performance, cost and speed.

What We're Looking For

Experience

• Significant experience leading application or product engineering teams.
• Strong background building and shipping production backend systems.
• Experience delivering complex distributed applications.
• Experience building or integrating AI-powered products and services.
• Track record delivering scalable, user-facing software systems.

Technical Skills

• Strong software architecture and systems design expertise.
• Deep understanding of backend platforms and APIs.
• Experience designing highly reliable production systems.
• Strong understanding of monitoring, observability and operational practices.
• Ability to work across application layers, with deep expertise in at least one area.
• Experience evaluating trade-offs across performance, cost and maintainability.

Leadership Skills

• Strong technical judgement.
• Ability to make decisions in ambiguous environments.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers.
• Strong ownership mentality and execution focus.

Success In This Role

• Production systems remain reliable, scalable and observable.
• AI capabilities are successfully translated into robust product experiences.
• Engineering teams deliver efficiently while maintaining quality standards.
• Reliability and latency continue to improve as products scale.
• Architectural decisions support both rapid delivery and long-term maintainability.

Why Join?

• Help define the architecture behind next-generation AI-powered products.
• Work at the intersection of AI, product and software engineering.
• Significant ownership and technical influence.
• Collaborate with talented engineers, researchers and product leaders.
• Opportunity to build foundational systems from an early stage.
• High-impact role with direct influence on product success.

If you're an engineering leader who enjoys building scalable systems, leading technical teams and turning complex AI capabilities into outstanding user experiences, we'd love to hear from you. Apply now or email Richard Fisher - rf@skillsearch.com

Years of experience and salary levels are shown purely as a guide. We will only consider applications from candidates that can demonstrate the skills or experience required for the role.

Please be aware that while we would love to respond to every application we receive, due to high numbers we cannot guarantee this. We do however appreciate any time you invest into the application and will make sure to get in touch should anything in future more closely fit your skillset.