Engineering Team Lead | Tech Team | Cambridge, UK

Savanta is one of the fastest growing agencies in market research with teams in the UK, Americas, and APAC. Our research solutions are driven by our technology. It’s central to driving innovation across the entire research process; helping us deliver agile solutions globally. We’ve developed technology to help clients Make Better Decisions.

We are looking for someone with experience leading an agile team along with extensive industry experience of software engineering (preferably in C# and .NET).

We’re mostly based around Cambridge in the UK. We’re a hybrid working team, so you can work from home, but we’d like you to spend at least one day a week in the office.

You will work on our Vue research platform which helps us provide a full service to our wide range of clients. Each dev team focuses on a different area of the research pipeline: This ranges from survey scripting, fieldwork, and data collection, through to analysis and delivery - including online exploration or integration with our APIs.

Your role as an Engineering Team Lead at Savanta

You will lead up of 3 to 6 engineers working in a cross functional agile team alongside a product manager, UX designer and QA.

You will lead the team to deliver the product roadmap alongside driving further adoption of Cloud first technologies – we are Azure based.

We use:

• C# – latest stable version of .NET
• React, TypeScript, Webpack
• SQL Server 2019+ hosted in Azure
• GitHub
• Azure AI Studio for GPT API access
• Azure DevOps and Octopus Deploy
• SaaS by default (e.g., Shortcut, Octopus Cloud, Freshdesk)

Day to day, you will be involved in:

• Full stack development.
• Managing a team of developers consisting of a range of ability and
• Conducting regular 121’s, setting objective and assisting with tailored development plans
• Mentoring, supporting, and encouraging our developers.
• Championing the best practice of Scrum at Savanta.
• Continuously improving the team’s processes for iterative development.
• Delivering a great user experience in the products you build.
• Finding ways to build fast, scalable, flexible systems without blowing the budget.
• Interacting directly with customers, understanding their needs, and generalising them.
• Working with staff engineers and others to define technical direction in a sequence of smaller, valuable chunks.

We want you to dive in, get your hands dirty, and figure things out, but also to be someone your team can rely on for help and guidance when they need it.

Our Tech Team works within a learning and collaborative environment, where empowerment is key to our success, along with developing a culture of innovation and creating an environment where everyone can excel. Our development teams have a lot of autonomy in how to work day-to-day, with support from other roles as needed.

We’re looking for somebody who has:

Essential Criteria

• Experience leading agile rapid release iterations.
• Extensive experience specifically with C# and .NET, or experience in closely related languages (Java, Python, Scala) including modern functional idioms.
• A willingness to learn – new technologies, our business and platform, and ways of working – is an absolute must.
• Full product delivery mindset focused on a tested user experience.
• Encourages a test first approach as part of stories aiming for high automated coverage.
• Runs meetings such as project kick-offs, stakeholder check-ins, and retrospectives.
• Comfortable with some ambiguity and shifting priorities in your work environment, and comfortable with managed change.
• Confident in using spikes to de-risk work as well as guiding the team in iterating towards a long-term scalable architecture.

Desirable Criteria

• Strong RDBMS experience and who knows at least one dialect of SQL well: e.g. you might have spent a lot of time with PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle.
• Experience configuring Azure services (or AWS!)
• Experience/interest of informal leadership or formal management experience.
• Experience working with across team boundaries with stakeholders.

And in return, Savanta offers:

• Salary range: £70,000 - £90,000
• Biannual bonus scheme
• Unlimited annual leave
• Hybrid working
• Flexible working practices
• Health & wellbeing package (Private medical insurance or a flexible, tailored suite of well-being benefits)
• Financial health (pension, life assurance, etc.)
• Team & Company Socials
• Committees for Health & Well Being, Charities & Volunteering and DE&I

Why Join Us

With teams in the UK, US, Canada, and India, over 650 staff globally, and ambitious growth plans, Savanta offers the benefits of scale, whilst our specialist teams make life at Savanta feel more like working at a smaller agency. Our client portfolio includes some of the world’s best-known brands, including Sainsbury's, Heathrow, Samsung, Toyota, NatWest Group, Sky, The British Red Cross, Citizens Advice, Gousto and Sport England.

Part of the vibrant Next 15 Communications Group, we have an entrepreneurial company culture that actively recognises and values its people and offers unrivalled scope for career development.

Savanta is committed to being an equal opportunities employer and continuously strives to be an employer of choice. Our people are our greatest asset - we value workplace diversity and inclusion, oppose all forms of unlawful discrimination, and welcome applications from suitably qualified candidates of all backgrounds.

All candidates will be considered equally, however, unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship.