Technical Lead

MAIN PURPOSE OF THE ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE BUSINESS

As a Technical Architect (Consultant) in Kainos, you’ll be responsible for leading teams and developing high quality solutions which delight our customers and impact the lives of users worldwide. As a technical leader on a project, you’ll work with customer architects to agree technical designs, advising on estimated effort and technical implications of user stories and user journeys. You’ll manage, coach and develop a small number of staff, with a focus on managing employee performance and assisting in their career development. It’s a fast-paced environment so it is important for you to make sound, reasoned decisions. You’ll do this whilst learning about new technologies and approaches, with room to learn, develop and grow.

This is a 6 month contract

MINIMUM (ESSENTIAL) REQUIREMENTS

• Experience delivering software designs for multi-tiered modern software applications.
• Experience of technical ownership for a product/software project, including architecture, estimation, product planning and user story/requirement creation.
• Understands non-functional concerns for customers and has experience incorporating these into the application design.
• Has experience with public cloud platforms, such as AWS and Azure, including SaaS and PaaS offerings.
• Able to simply and clearly communicate technical design in conversation, documentation and presentations.
• Able to make effective decisions within fast-moving delivery.
• We are passionate about developing people – a demonstrated ability in managing, coaching and developing junior members of your team and wider community.

DESIRABLE

• Good communication skills, with the ability to communicate issues to technical and non-technical people.
• Experience of multiple programming languages and data storage technologies.
• Experience in managing others, setting objectives, giving feedback and leading performance reviews.
• Active participation in knowledge sharing activities, both within the team and at a wider capability level and externally where appropriate.
• Has participated in technology communities.

TECH STACK

• Strong PHP experience, including refactoring and maintaining large, business‑critical production systems, preferably with Laminas/Zend frameworks
• TypeScript and Node.js experience for modern MOT services and APIs
• AWS cloud experience, including serverless and container-based applications
• Strong CI/CD pipeline experience, including GitHub Actions and Jenkins
• Ability to design and deliver incremental releases in critical systems without service disruption
• Experience working with relational databases (e.g. MariaDB)
• Strong automated testing mindset, including improving testability of legacy PHP systems
• Experience setting technical direction, standards, and code quality
• Proven technical leadership in government, regulated, or high‑assurance environments