Ocho
Lead Engineer
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OCHO PEOPLE | JOB SPECIFICATION
Engineering Team Lead -- Ruby on Rails and React
Belfast, Hybrid
AT A GLANCE
- Hands-on engineering lead role, managing a small team of early-career engineers and apprentices
- Ruby on Rails and React stack; new V2 platform being built from the ground up
- Belfast based, hybrid, 2 to 3 days on site per week
- Salary: to be confirmed
- A genuine greenfield opportunity -- first engineering lead this team has ever had
ABOUT OUR CLIENT
Our client builds the operating system for a major global sport, providing software that organisations worldwide use to run their day-to-day operations. With over 7,000 organisations on the platform and teams across every major professional league, it is one of the most established names in its sector. Its Inventory Management product is now being rebuilt from scratch as a modern platform, and this hire will lead that rebuild.
THE ROLE
This is the first engineering lead our client has appointed to its Inventory Management team, and that is the point. The product came in through an acquisition and is being re-platformed from a legacy ASP.NET and MS SQL codebase onto Ruby on Rails, React and React Native.
You will set the technical direction, the ways of working and the standards this team learns from, all while staying close enough to the code to unblock, review and teach. As the team grows, your time will shift from writing code to growing the people writing it.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Own the technical direction of the Rails and React platform and lead the migration away from the legacy stack
- Write, review and unblock code across Rails, React and React Native, with your coding time reducing as the team scales
- Line manage engineers and apprentices: 1:1s, performance reviews, growth plans and the difficult conversations when they arise
- Pair regularly with apprentices and use code review as a teaching tool, setting a clear bar without undermining confidence
- Coach the team to use AI coding tools effectively, so they understand and can explain what they ship
- Own the roadmap jointly with the product manager, setting priorities, making trade-offs and committing to realistic milestones
- Plan and execute customer migrations from the legacy product to V2, scheduled around their seasons
- Act as the team's point of contact for Invest NI and the apprenticeship programme
- Build the team's ways of working from scratch, including standards, processes and engineering culture
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WHAT YOU'LL NEED
Essential
- 6+ years hands-on as a software engineer, with Ruby on Rails depth sufficient to tech lead a re-platform
- React experience you are actively using, you will need to work in it day to day and teach it to apprentices
- 2+ years line managing engineers, including 1:1s, performance reviews, growth plans and difficult conversations
- Demonstrated experience pairing with, reviewing and growing early-career engineers or apprentices
- A genuine interest in developing people, not just writing code, you should be able to say why
- Experience co-owning a roadmap with a product manager and pushing back on commitments the team could not meet
- Based within commuting distance of Belfast; this is a hybrid role with 2 to 3 days on site expected
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Nice to have
- Experience migrating a legacy product onto a new platform, particularly off.NET or MS SQL
- React Native in a production environment
- Daily use of AI coding tools, with a formed view on quality and cost
- Infrastructure as Code experience, such as Terraform or Kubernetes
- Exposure to apprenticeship schemes or Invest NI programmes
- Domain knowledge in inventory, warehouse, order management or retail stock systems
WHY APPLY
- Salary: to be confirmed (please get in touch for details)
- Hybrid working: 2 to 3 days per week in the Belfast office
- First engineering lead role on this team, you shape the culture, the standards and the technical direction from day one
- A V2 re-platform on a modern Rails and React stack, with real ownership over architecture and delivery
- A high-potential early-career team to develop through a meaningful stage of their careers
- Exposure to a global technology company with 7,000+ organisations on its platform
- Involvement in Belfast's Invest NI apprenticeship programme
GET IN TOUCH
For a confidential conversation about this role, connect with Ryan Quinn on LinkedIn. Or apply via the link below.
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