Lead Software Architect

Final date to receive applications: 27 October 2026

Department: Recharge

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Remote - UK

Location: Remote, UK-based, with occasional travel to meet the senior team in the UK or Germany
Working hours: UK working hours, with reasonable flexibility for planned international meetings
Reports to: Chief Product Officer

We’re looking for an experienced Lead Software Architect to take technical ownership of the architecture and continued productisation of Steel Buy
, our secure B2B marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of metal.

Steel Buy is part of tk accelis Trading
, formerly thyssenkrupp Materials Trading, combining the agility of a developing digital platform with the industry expertise and international reach of an established global materials trading organisation.

Our immediate commercial and operational focus is the US market
, but our ambitions go further. We want to develop Steel Buy into a scalable and adaptable technical product that can support different markets, business models and integrations in the future, potentially including Europe.

This is an opportunity to have a significant influence on that journey.

As Lead Software Architect, you’ll provide the technical vision and architectural direction for the platform while remaining close enough to the technology to make pragmatic, informed decisions.

You’ll lead and mentor our back-end engineering team based in India, collaborate with colleagues and stakeholders across the UK, Europe and US, and help establish the technical standards and ways of working that enable us to build a secure, scalable and high-quality product.

The role will cover back-end architecture
, microservices
, Dev Ops
, enterprise integrations
, APIs and distributed systems
, alongside providing technical leadership to our internal development teams and external partners.

Although you’ll occasionally work across international time zones, the role operates primarily around UK working hours
. Routine alignment to US hours isn't expected.

• Own and evolve the overall software and systems architecture for Steel Buy, ensuring the platform is scalable, secure, maintainable and adaptable.
• Help transform the platform from a primarily US-focused implementation into a reusable technical product capable of supporting future markets and business models.
• Translate business and system requirements into clear high-level technical designs, architecture and documentation.
• Define functional and non-functional technical requirements and help shape the engineering backlog.
• Lead architectural decisions covering technology, development approaches, workflows, integration patterns and coding standards.
• Provide technical leadership, coaching and mentoring to developers and engineers.
• Oversee development to ensure solutions remain aligned with agreed architecture and design principles.
• Establish and promote engineering best practice across areas including Agile delivery, test-driven development, automated testing and continuous integration.
• Design effective REST APIs and microservices-based solutions.
• Support the architecture of enterprise and ERP integrations.
• Evaluate existing tools, frameworks and development approaches, identifying opportunities to improve quality and efficiency.
• Remain technically engaged, contributing to solutions and code where your expertise can add value.
• Support effective CI/CD and Dev Ops practices.
• Collaborate with product, engineering and business stakeholders across multiple countries and time zones.
• Clearly communicate technical concepts, decisions and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Help create a culture focused on technical excellence, continuous improvement…