Quick Summary
About Lightfoot
Lightfoot develops cutting-edge connected-vehicle technology, including in-cab driver coaching, advanced vehicle safety products, and comprehensive fleet telematics solutions. Our robust software powers real hardware in vehicles for major clients like Tesco, Asda, Ocado, Virgin Media, and Iceland.
We are an established company with mature products and engineering teams, yet agile enough for significant technical decisions to directly influence our strategic direction.
We are currently undertaking a major rebuild of Lightfoot's core software, encompassing the customer portal, supporting APIs, and mobile applications. This transformation leverages Python, React, and React Native on AWS. Our approach to software development is also evolving, focusing on stronger architecture, enhanced automated testing, secure-by-default delivery, and effective agentic development for production systems. We are seeking a visionary Technical Leader to spearhead this transition and guide the development team.
Employment Type: Permanent, full-time, Monday to Friday.
Location: Remote, with an expectation to attend our Exeter, Devon office approximately every two to three weeks for collaborative sessions such as architecture discussions, critical project kick-offs, retrospectives, and team engagement.
About the Role
This is primarily a technical leadership role. You will lead the Applications engineering function, and we are specifically looking for an engineer who remains deeply involved in technical decisions, not just a manager. Your expertise will be crucial in setting technical direction, making architectural decisions, elevating engineering standards across the team, and maintaining a close understanding of implementation details to ensure decisions are effective.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead the architecture of our next-generation platform, spanning backend, web, and mobile domains.
- Strategically manage the migration from our existing PHP/MySQL estate.
- Define and implement engineering standards and patterns for the new platform.
- Oversee the comprehensive testing strategy, including test scope, automation, and quality integration into delivery pipelines.
- Drive our adoption of agentic software development, scaling individual successes into a repeatable team capability.
- Integrate security and observability into the platform from its inception.
- Enhance the technical capabilities of the team through design reviews, mentorship, and hands-on leadership.
While you will also line-manage the team and be accountable for delivery, your technical judgment is the paramount reason for this hire.
Our Technology Stack & Your Influence
The core technology direction is established:
- Python / FastAPI for new backend services.
- React / TypeScript for web applications.
- React Native for mobile development.
- AWS as the primary cloud platform.
- Utilization of managed and serverless services where appropriate.
- Agentic development as a standard engineering practice.
You will not be tasked with stack selection. Instead, your focus will be on critical underlying decisions: defining service boundaries, API design, migration sequencing, refining the testing strategy, establishing engineering standards, implementing secure development practices, enhancing observability, and optimizing agentic development across the team.
Important Constraint: Our mission-critical database is shared across multiple engineering teams. Significant schema changes require negotiation and cannot be decided unilaterally. We believe in transparent communication regarding such architectural constraints upfront.
Hands-On Leadership
Success in this role is not measured by the number of sprint tickets closed. Instead, you are expected to maintain strong technical credibility by reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, prototyping key patterns, engaging with complex implementations, and guiding the team in solving challenging problems.
Your leadership will stem from strong technical judgment and expertise, not from detachment from the code.
What We're Looking For
While you don't need to be an expert in every technology listed, you must be a formidable technical leader.
We seek candidates who:
- Have technically led engineers, beyond just managerial duties.
- Have designed and evolved substantial production systems.
- Possess the ability to make architectural decisions and articulate the underlying trade-offs.
- Demonstrate strong backend engineering depth, ideally with Python expertise.
- Have hands-on experience with AWS and Docker in production environments.
- Have successfully modernized or re-platformed live, critical systems.
- Understand automated testing profoundly enough to define a comprehensive strategy, not merely mandate more tests.
- Approach security as an inherent engineering responsibility.
- Can quickly grasp unfamiliar or legacy codebases to understand their true functionality.
- Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- Maintain composure during high-pressure situations involving systems, customers, or shifting priorities.
Familiarity with PHP and older JavaScript is beneficial due to our migration from this existing estate, though a passion for these technologies is not required. For the right candidate, technical strength is prioritized over arriving as a fully polished engineering manager.
Why This is an Excellent Opportunity
- You will actively shape the future platform, rather than solely maintaining existing systems. The technological direction is set, and the transformation is already in progress.
- The architecture is still evolving, offering genuine opportunities to make significant decisions about the future build of Lightfoot.
- Agentic engineering is a tangible reality here. We are already successfully applying it to production engineering tasks, and you will help scale this from an individual capability to a team-wide strength.
- The work is highly tangible. Our software connects to devices in real vehicles. You will see systems built by your team in action, supporting grocery deliveries, broadband installations, and operations for some of the UK's largest fleets.
- Engage with technology that is easily relatable: vehicles, drivers, safety, and data at scale. You will literally observe your technology in the windscreens of vehicles driving around town, delivering essential services.