Technical Lead Contentful

WPP Enterprise Solutions designs, builds, and operates the growth systems that competitive businesses rely on. In a world where Al is reshaping how companies drive growth, we lead clients in business transformation and marketing modernization, connecting strategy directly to execution. Our 12,000 experts in engineering and platforms, commerce, consulting, content transformation, CRM, and CX work within a unified global operating unit across 40+ markets.

WPP Enterprise Solutions works alongside best-in-class partners including Adobe, AWS, Braze, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Shopify, as well as innovators in AI, to deliver growth solutions tailored to the needs of our clients’ businesses. VML, part of WPP, supports WPP Enterprise Solutions by helping brands activate transformation through creativity and experience.

Contentful Technical Lead wanted to join a high-profile digital experience project for a major global brand.

This is a high-impact technical leadership role combining ownership of enterprise platform delivery, client-facing discovery and technical workshops with strong architectural influence and a balance between technical leadership and hands-on engineering.

You will help shape a modern, composable platform built around Contentful, React and an AWS-based integration and service layer
, working closely with architects, engineers and client stakeholders. The project's technical landscape includes Contentful, AWS infrastructure, APIs and identity/profile services.

A key part of the role is understanding Contentful as part of a wider technology ecosystem
. You will make pragmatic technical decisions about what should be handled by Contentful out of the box, what belongs in the frontend or AWS middle layer, and how integrations with existing services should be designed.

The initial phase will focus heavily on technical discovery
, turning requirements, existing architecture and integration constraints into clear technical decisions and an actionable implementation backlog.

• Lead technical discovery, facilitating client-facing workshops and translating business requirements into technical decisions.
• Shape the overall implementation approach across Contentful, React, AWS services and enterprise systems.
• Define clear boundaries between CMS capabilities, frontend functionality, integration/middleware services and backend business logic.
• Decide where integrations should be implemented and define appropriate API and integration patterns.
• Review and evolve Contentful content models, composition rules and reusable content patterns.
• Shape the AWS-based integration and service layer connecting Contentful and the frontend with APIs, identity/profile services and other systems.
• Turn discovery outcomes into technical scope, architecture and an actionable implementation backlog.
• Lead engineers throughout delivery, providing hands-on guidance, code reviews and support with complex technical decisions.
• Ensure strong engineering practices around security, performance, automated testing, CI/CD and observability.

These areas align with the planned technical discovery covering Contentful, AWS infrastructure, API contracts, profile services, security, CI/CD and integrations.

• Strong commercial experience with Contentful and headless CMS architectures.
• Strong React and Type Script experience in production-grade applications.
• Good practical knowledge of AWS, particularly cloud-based services and integration layers.
• Strong understanding of API design, middleware and system integration patterns.
• Experience designing solutions where a headless CMS is part of a larger enterprise architecture, rather than a standalone platform.
• Ability to make sound architectural decisions about what belongs in the CMS, frontend, middle layer or backend services.
• Experience integrating CMS platforms with APIs, identity/profile services and other enterprise systems.
• Proven experience leading technical discovery, requirements analysis and solution design.
• Strong client-facing communication skills and the ability to explain technical decisions and trade-offs to both technical and business stakeholders.
• Experience providing technical leadership while remaining hands-on when needed.
• Fluency in English.

• Contentful
• React / Type Script
• AWS-based services and integration layer
• REST APIs and service integrations
• Identity and profile services
• Server-side rendering
• CI/CD and automated testing
• Performance,…