Lead Software Engineer

Purpose of the role

Lead Software Engineers are responsible for improving how Redgate builds and maintains software, alongside actively contributing to product development.

About the role

The Lead Software Engineer (LSE) drives technical excellence within their engineering team and across their solution group. They are responsible for continuously improving the quality of technical practices, exemplifying engineering excellence and pragmatic problem-solving.

At the team level, the LSE develops engineers' technical skills and maintains the conditions for high-quality work. They are expected to have broad knowledge across multiple domains and deep expertise in specific technologies, acting as the recognised go-to person for those areas within the team and across the solution group. They balance hands-on technical contribution with deliberate delegation, creating ownership opportunities for engineers rather than solving every problem personally.

Beyond their immediate team, the LSE shapes technical direction across the solution group. They work closely with architects and other LSEs to implement and improve technical policies and standards, and contribute a well-reasoned technical perspective to architectural discussions. The LSE is accountable for technical consistency across the solution group, including maintaining Architecture Decision Records so that institutional knowledge is preserved.

The LSE works in close partnership with the Tech Lead. While the TL leads on prioritisation, team progress, and operational health, the LSE owns the technical dimension of PLT discussions, including decisions, risks, trade-offs, and standards. Together they keep the team aligned on objectives and accountable for delivery.

The LSE also brings a commercial lens to their technical work. They understand the product's business context well enough to make better trade-offs, frame technical investment in terms of business outcomes, and incorporate customer insight into engineering decisions.

A lead software engineer will be doing most of the points below consistently.

Skills

Leadership

Sets and Holds a High Bar: Maintains high standards for code quality, system design, testing, and engineering practice. Makes trade-offs between quality, speed, and consistency explicit rather than letting them happen by default.
Influences Technical Direction: Shapes technical direction within the team and contributes to it across the solution group, working with architects, other LSEs, and the PLT. Navigates clearly between decisions they own directly and those requiring broader alignment. Has enough familiarity with how architects and other LSEs work to know when to bring them in early rather than after the fact.
Improves Engineering Practice: Identifies where engineering practice needs to improve across the full breadth of the team's work and drives that change by building awareness and demonstrating value, following through until the improvement is embedded rather than moving on once the case has been made.
Contributes and Delegates with Intent: Balances direct technical contribution with consistently creating conditions for engineers to take ownership, resisting the pull to solve problems personally and delegating deliberately with development intent, matching assignments to where each engineer needs to grow. Remains available and escalates to the PLT when an issue is genuinely beyond the team.
Partners with the Tech Lead and PLT: Works in close partnership with the Tech Lead, acting as the technical authority in PLT discussions. Owns the technical dimension of PLT communication, decisions, risks, trade-offs, and standards, while the TL leads on prioritisation, team progress, and operational health.

Mentorship

Develops Technical Capability Intentionally: Uses situational leadership to develop team members: directing where needed, coaching where possible, and aligning development with personal goals and team needs.
Provides Expert Technical Mentorship: Proactively guides engineers' technical development across a broad range of technologies, architectural approaches, and engineering practice, not just areas of personal expertise, deliberately stretching engineers into areas they have not yet tackled rather than defaulting to what they already do well.
Addresses Skill Gaps Systematically: Identifies technical skill gaps across the team, forms a plan to address them in coordination with the Tech Lead, and leads the work.
Creates Space for Others to Lead: Recognises potential and creates stretch assignments, resisting the pull to solve every hard problem personally.

Technical Expertise

Breadth and Depth: Maintains broad knowledge across multiple domains while developing deep expertise in the team's specific technologies. Is the recognised go-to person for those areas within the team and across the solution group.
Leads Design Discussions: Leads design discussions within the team, ensuring decisions are well-reasoned, clearly documented, and understood by those who will implement them. Contributes to architectural discussions at solution group level alongside architects, bringing a prepared, well-reasoned position rather than arriving open-ended.
Makes and Communicates Technical Decisions: Articulates technical decisions clearly using data and reasoned argument, creating a visible decision-making process others can learn from. Documents decisions in a way that outlasts the conversation.
Applies and Translates Industry Trends: Monitors relevant technologies and translates promising external developments into concrete, actionable proposals rather than simply flagging what exists.
Upholds and Evolves Technical Standards: Upholds technical policies and actively works to improve them, ensuring standards are understood and owned by the team rather than imposed from above.

Communication

Translates Complexity for Any Audience: Conveys complex technical concepts clearly to any audience, from engineers to senior stakeholders, adjusting depth and framing to what they actually need. Equally fluent translating inward, helping engineers understand the business, customer, and cross-functional context behind decisions, not just the technical conclusions.
Raises Issues Early: Identifies and communicates issues, constraints, and dependencies before they become blockers, escalating to the PLT with proposed solutions rather than just problems.
Fosters Shared Understanding Within the Team: Ensures team discussions result in genuine shared understanding of decisions and priorities, not just nominal agreement, and follows up deliberately to check alignment has held across the team.
Builds Relationships Across Redgate: Builds working relationships with LSEs and engineers in other solution groups. Shares knowledge across group boundaries, reaches out for help, and makes themselves available to others doing the same, contributing to raising engineering standards across Redgate.
Produces High-Quality Documentation: Produces clear technical documentation, architecture decision records, and presentations that others use as a reference long after the original work is done.

Emotional Intelligence

Creates Psychological Safety: Creates an environment where team members consistently feel safe to share concerns, challenge ideas, and admit uncertainty and treats this as a precondition for high-quality technical work. Seeks input openly, including from junior engineers, consistently enough to shift team norms.
Facilitates Productive Conflict: Ensures technical debates result in better decisions rather than disengagement, resolving disagreements constructively and without lasting damage to relationships.
Gives Feedback with Clarity and Care: Gives feedback with a clear sense of what each person needs to grow, connecting observations to development over time rather than addressing isolated incidents. Follows up to check it has landed and adjusts approach based on what works for each person.
Stays Steady Under Pressure: Is steady across a range of difficult situations (not just incidents) in a way that builds trust over time and gives the team a reliable reference point for how to behave when things are hard.

Delivery

Shapes the Technical Roadmap: Contributes consistently to technical strategy and roadmap prioritisation through PLT participation, making a clear and well-reasoned case for investment in technical debt, infrastructure, and architectural work alongside feature delivery.
Ensures Product Consistency: Ensures technical consistency across the solution group, maintaining a clear picture of where patterns and standards diverge across teams and actively working to close gaps that matter. Implements and maintains Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) so that institutional knowledge does not walk out the door.
Drives Accountability: Works with the TL to align the team on objectives and reinforce accountability for delivery, facilitating clear communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Champions Product Quality: Cultivates a codebase that is easy to change, test, and reason about, treating maintainability as a first-class engineering concern throughout development and production.
Translates Strategy into Action: Proactively builds the team's understanding of technical strategy and the reasoning behind decisions, so they can navigate ambiguity and exercise good judgement independently when reality diverges from the plan.

Business Knowledge

Understands the Commercial Context: Has solid knowledge of the product's commercial context, including business model, revenue drivers, and lifecycle stage, and uses this to inform technical trade-offs and prioritisation rather than treating it as background noise.
Aligns Technical Investment with Business Strategy: Ensures technical investment across the team is framed in terms of Redgate's broader strategy and can articulate clearly why a proposed investment will move the business forward, helping the team develop the same habit.
Brings Customer Perspective into Technical Decisions: Actively seeks direct customer contact to build first-hand understanding, bringing that perspective into engineering decisions across the team and encouraging engineers to do the same.