Tech Lead - Payments and Billing

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Tech Lead – Payments and Billing based in United Kingdom.** This is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on building the next generation of payments infrastructure for a rapidly scaling energy platform. You’ll lead a newly established Payments squad responsible for a critical billing and payments service, with direct influence over reliability, scalability, accuracy, and processing costs. You’ll set the technical direction while remaining deeply involved in design, code reviews, architecture, and solving complex engineering problems alongside the team. The role combines technical leadership, delivery ownership, architecture, coaching, and operational problem-solving. You’ll work with a team of experienced and developing engineers, establishing ways of working that balance speed, quality, and resilience. It’s an opportunity to shape a core financial system from an early stage and grow it into infrastructure capable of supporting significant transaction volumes. ### Accountabilities: - Own the overall delivery outcomes of the Payments squad, ensuring the team consistently delivers reliable, high-quality software and maintains strong engineering standards. - Set the technical and architectural direction for the payments domain, transforming an existing functional service into infrastructure designed for significant future scale. - Lead from the front by writing technical specifications and design documents, reviewing architecture decision records and pull requests, and contributing directly to implementation. - Solve the most complex technical problems alongside the engineering team while maintaining a clear long-term technical vision. - Establish the squad’s operating model, defining effective ways of working and balancing delivery speed with quality, resilience, and maintainability. - Drive improvements in **payment accuracy and processing efficiency**, with a direct focus on reducing the cost of processing transactions as volumes increase. - Identify and resolve technical blockers that could prevent the squad from delivering effectively, rather than simply escalating or reporting them. - Manage technical sequencing, cross-team dependencies, and delivery priorities while ensuring the squad’s progress and challenges remain visible to relevant stakeholders. - Diagnose throughput and delivery issues, identify their underlying causes, and implement structural improvements. - Coach junior engineers and work closely with senior engineers to raise technical quality, development speed, and engineering consistency across the squad. - Define and communicate what good engineering looks like through hands-on collaboration, design reviews, code reviews, and continuous feedback. - Partner with management on hiring and promotion decisions by identifying capability gaps and providing technical input, while formal people management remains with the designated manager. ## Requirements: - Proven experience as a **Tech Lead or equivalent technical leader**, with ownership of a team’s delivery outcomes and engineering standards. - Strong track record of leading from the front line, including writing design documents, reviewing pull requests and architecture decisions, and solving complex technical challenges hands-on. - Ability to balance direct contribution to major technical problems with coaching and developing less experienced engineers. - Experience establishing a team’s engineering practices and ways of working from the ground up, with a pragmatic approach to balancing speed, quality, reliability, and resilience. - Demonstrated ability to manage cross-team sequencing and dependencies and diagnose the underlying causes of delivery or throughput problems. - Strong judgment in ambiguous environments, with the ability to establish technical direction without waiting for complete requirements or predefined solutions. - Proven ability to drive technical blockers through to resolution and maintain momentum toward delivery. - Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineers, product stakeholders, and leadership. - Experience with **payments systems** is highly desirable. - Experience improving processing efficiency or cost-to-process within a high-volume service is an advantage. - Experience taking an early-stage or basic service and evolving it into a robust, scalable production system is a strong plus. - Comfortable working in a remote-first, fast-moving environment where autonomy, ownership, and pragmatic decision-making are highly valued. ## Benefits: - **Competitive salary:** Attractive compensation aligned with the seniority and technical leadership scope of the role. - **Stock options:** Receive equity and share in the long-term value created by the organization. - **Generous time off:** 25 days of annual leave plus public holidays. - **Flexible public holidays:** Swap public holidays for days that are more meaningful to you. - **Birthday off:** Enjoy an additional day away from work on your birthday. - **Remote-first working:** Work remotely with flexibility around where and how you work. - **Clear core hours:** Benefit from defined collaboration windows while maintaining flexibility outside those hours. - **Meeting-free Friday afternoons:** Dedicated time for deep work, focus, and personal priorities. - **Remote-work allowance:** Up to **£1,200 or €1,200 per year** toward your home-office setup. - **Wellbeing allowance:** Up to **£150 or €150 per month** to support your health and wellbeing. - **High-impact ownership:** Shape the architecture, operating model, and engineering standards of a new payments squad. - **Hands-on leadership:** Combine technical leadership with meaningful hands-on engineering work rather than moving entirely into management. - **Inclusive environment:** Applications are welcomed from people of all backgrounds, experiences, and identities, including those traditionally underrepresented in technology and energy.