Technical Lead

Position: Counter Tech Lead

Location: North, hybrid (Manchester or Leeds)

Salary: £55-70K

Contract: Start ASAP

Background to the role:

In 2024, Northcoders Group launched Counter, a standalone tech consultancy delivering high-quality, affordable onshore technology teams to UK organisations.

Counter builds client teams from the Northcoders and Tech Returners talent pools, with dedicated Tech Leads providing technical leadership, mentoring, and ensuring alignment with clients' technology, ways of working, and delivery goals.

At the end of each engagement, clients have the option to hire the consultants permanently, while Tech Leads move on to support new client projects.

Following a successful first year working with clients including HMRC, Skipton Building Society, and Manchester Airport Group, we're expanding our team and looking for experienced Tech Leads to join us.

Reports to: Technical Director

Base Location: Manchester or Leeds - Client's will often require travel and you can expect the potential for travelling to the clients office regularly.

Our tech leads operate in two main capacities. Internally, they provide technical guidance and development for their team of engineers, guiding the engineers on best practice and ensuring a focus on maintaining progress of the project.

External aspects of the project, the tech lead cultivates strong relationships with stakeholders. Through proactive relationship management, the tech lead ensures stakeholder buy-in and alignment throughout the project lifecycle.

You can expect to balance hands-on development work and non-hands on work throughout. Typically and 80/20 (20% hands on development work) at the start of a project. As projects progress you can expect a balance somewhere in the region of 60/40 (40% hands on development work).

Responsibilities:

• Working with our Technical Director, you will identify what the project is trying to achieve, why things need to change, how they need to change and what critical features need to be delivered for the project to be a success
• Identifying external dependencies and building up relationships where required
• Providing structure for estimates and ordering of work
• Supporting team in operating in an agile way. Whichever form of agile works for the team, you’ll support them with guiding ceremonies like planning or retrospective actions
• A good tech lead will seek input from their team and external client teams whilst maintaining accountability for the technical architecture
• Stay on top of the latest approaches, practices and frameworks. Keeping up to date with external sources such as the Tech Radar
• Ensuring that the project meets the correct, required level of quality
• You’ll establish and maintain the culture of your team. As an ecosystem, your team will experience various different cultures such as the wider Northcoders organisation culture as well the culture of the client in which the team operates. As such, you will have to consciously work on maintaining the sub-culture of your team whilst integrating with wider organisations.
• A key part of the offering is that clients can permanently hire the engineers (excluding the tech lead) that delivered their project. As a result, you will need to support answering the questions of the team whilst also working with the client to enable an effective onboarding from consultancy role to full time client role.

About You:

We're looking for someone who enjoys both technical delivery and people development, with the confidence to work with diverse stakeholders and deliver great outcomes for clients.

You'll have proven experience leading technical teams, ideally in a consultancy, though other technical leadership experience is also valued. Just as importantly, you'll mentor others, helping them grow their technical skills, confidence, and careers.

You're passionate about continuous learning, stay current with emerging technologies, and enjoy sharing your knowledge. Above all, you take pride in delivering high-quality results and thrive in a role that combines technical leadership with developing people.

Adding Value: The “Three C’s”

Tech Leads contribute to Counter’s ecosystem in three key areas, known as the “Three C’s”:

Counter

This focuses on the Tech Lead’s impact on Counter as a whole. Examples of value here include:

• Contributing to marketing efforts, such as writing blogs or establishing a voice on social media
• Delivering talks or meetups
• Improving or developing Counter’s internal processes and approaches
• Supporting other Tech Leads or cross-functional projects
• Collaborating with other teams, like Internal Development, or presenting within Counter

Client

When on a project, the Tech Lead has a unique opportunity to create value for the client. Evidence of impact includes:

• Receiving positive, unsolicited client feedback on the project
• Regular client feedback surveys every two months

Consultant

This area highlights the Tech Lead’s influence on the consultants within their team. Counter encourages clients to consider full-time roles for consultants (excluding the Tech Lead). While the Tech Lead cannot directly control hiring decisions, they play a key role in supporting consultants’ development, ensuring they’re in a stronger professional position at the end of the engagement, whether with the client or elsewhere.

Evidence of impact here includes:

• Positive feedback in consultant surveys
• Client feedback that mentions consultants by name

Benefits:

• Hybrid working model
• 4.5 day working week
• 5 weeks holiday plus Bank Holidays
• Enhanced family friendly policies
• Digital pension with a good employer contribution
• Life Assurance 3x annual salary
• Employee Assistance Programme with access to digital GP appointments and Mental Health Support
• Focus on Employee Wellbeing
• Modern city centre offices (Manchester/Leeds)
• Free refreshments and fruit in all offices
• Optional Private Health Insurance
• Option to purchase extra holidays
• Optional Medical Cash Back Plan
• Optional membership to a Credit Union