Tech Lead (AWS ​/ TypeScript ​/ Python

Tech Lead (AWS / Type Script / Python)
Location and basis

Contract, outside IR35. Starting as soon as possible.

Fully flexible working: home, office, or a mix, your call. We just ask that you're based within 50 miles of Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester or London.

Applications from outside these areas won't be considered.

You'll lead engineering on a high-volume online marketplace, part-way through a major, multi-year technology transformation. There's a live migration to AWS and a full version 2 build underway.

The current client-facing platform runs on PHP and Laravel, and the target is a service-based architecture on AWS built in Type Script, JavaScript and Python. You'll set technical direction across that shift while keeping delivery moving.

You'll need to be hands-on and broad: someone who understands cloud, architecture, data, auth, front-end and APIs, and has built service-based platforms in AWS before. In an older structure this person would have carried an architect title.

This is a demanding, fast-paced environment. You'll need to be productive quickly without a long ramp.

This is a genuinely large-scale marketplace. Very few platforms handle a product catalogue or transaction volume at this level.

The roadmap includes agentic AI workflows built into the platform, retail media integrated directly into the marketplace, and infrastructure work targeting cost and performance at high volume.

A lot of this is being attempted at volumes that have rarely been tested in a marketplace before, so the work leans research-led rather than routine.

This is a fast-paced scale-up environment on a complex platform.

You'll do well here if you think strategically rather than transactionally, and you can advocate for technical change and bring people with you.

The essentials:

• Principal-level engineering breadth across cloud, architecture, data, auth, front-end and APIs
• Track record building service-based platforms in AWS, with infrastructure as code (Terraform or CDK)
• You write Type Script, JavaScript and Python, and can read and work with PHP (Laravel)
• You set and hold engineering standards, and communicate decisions with authority
• Comfortable leading delivery in a fast-moving, complex environment
• Comfortable working in English, written and spoken

• Retail or e-commerce background
• Experience leading through a major re-architecture or cloud migration
• GenAI or agentic workflows in your engineering practice