Lead Developer

The Technical Lead Developer is a practitioner-leader, someone who guides their team to deliver high-quality software solutions, while remaining deeply hands-on with code. This role bridges technical excellence and team enablement, embodying a philosophy of continuous improvement, clean code, and collaborative delivery. This role reports to our Engineering Managers and is critical in Taylor & Francis growth to a Leading Knowledge Marketplace. This is an exciting time to join our historical business as we ensure that technology is at the forefront of Academic Publishing.

Based in our Technology hub in Bangalore, we seek a dynamic, results oriented Technology leader, the Technology lead will make timely, practical decisions that balance immediate needs with long-term goals, ensuring progress without unnecessary delays. In support their team to devise innovative technology that solves our customer needs.

Technical Leadership 

• Lead the design of scalable, resilient, and maintainable cloud-based system architectures aligned with product and business needs
• Advocate for and implement modern engineering practices, such as Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Write, review, and own production-quality code as an active contributor to the team's codebase; this is a technical, hands-on role
• Champion the use of AI-first software delivery approaches, leveraging AI tools and frameworks to enhance development efficiency, automate repetitive tasks, and improve decision-making
• Drive architectural decisions at the team and system level, balancing pragmatism with long-term maintainability

Team Guidance & Mentorship 

• Act as a mentor and coach to team members, fostering a culture of learning and growth, spotting and capitalising on high potential, supporting individual growth through targeted feedback and development conversations
• Foster a collaborative and inclusive team environment by prioritizing the success of the team over individual achievements.
• Demonstrate humility by valuing and implementing good ideas, regardless of their source, ensuring every team member feels heard and respected.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing through pair programming, code reviews, and technical discussions
• Foster a psychologically safe environment where team members can raise technical concerns and experiment without fear of failure

Delivery & Collaboration 

• Help break down complex technical work into well-scoped, deliverable increments
• Serving as the primary technical reference point for the team, collaborate with cross-functional teams, including QAs, product owners, architects, designers, and program management to clarify requirements, surface constraints, align technical solutions with business goals
• Work closely with the Architecture Advice Forum through Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) to contribute to cross-team technical strategy, championing evolutionary architecture principles
• Remove technical blockers and escalate risks early to protect team delivery commitments
• Balance delivery pace with technical health — advocating for investment in test coverage, refactoring, and debt reduction

Quality & Engineering Excellence 

• Champion test-driven development (TDD), behaviour-driven development (BDD), and automated testing at all levels
• Collaborate with platform teams to establish CI/CD pipelines and automate deployment processes
• Oversee the design and implementation of Infrastructure as Code using tools like Terraform to automate infrastructure provisioning and management
• Ensure robust monitoring, logging, and alerting systems are in place to maintain system reliability and performance
• Promote security-by-design and advocate for responsible handling of data and infrastructure

Communication and Stakeholder Engagement 

• Effectively communicate technical concepts, challenges, and solutions to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Represent the engineering team in cross-functional forums and leadership discussions
• Build trust with internal stakeholders through transparency about risk, progress, and technical decisions

Technical expertise

• 7+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 2+ years in a technical leadership role
• Deep expertise in at least one modern programming language (e.g. Java, Kotlin, Python) with strong working knowledge of others
• Strong understanding of software architecture, design patterns, and principles (e.g., SOLID, microservices, event-driven architectures)
• Experience with AI tools, frameworks, platforms, and their application in software delivery
• Experience with cloud platforms (especially AWS services), containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks
• Familiarity with databases (SQL and NoSQL) and data modelling
• Fluency with XP practices: TDD, pair programming, continuous integration, refactoring
• Working knowledge of security principles (secrets management, least privilege)

Leadership & Collaboration 

• Proven track record of leading technical delivery within a cross-functional team, able to build trust and collective responsibility within the team. Proven experience of mentoring others and bringing out the best performance in all.
• Strong decision maker, able to ensure that the priorities of the business are well communicated to the team and acted upon.
• Adaptable and experienced in change management
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to facilitate technical discussions, architecture reviews, and decision-making processes
• Ability to work collaboratively in a fast-moving global environment with lots of ambiguity

You must have the right to work and live in India.

Location: The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a commutable distance of our Bengaluru office to ensure that as a balanced worker they can make it to our office location to collaborate as required. There is an expectation for a minimum of 3 days per week in-person time.

We believe that great things happen when people connect face-to-face. That's why we work in-person with each other, or with customers and partners, three days a week or more. When you’re not spending time together in one of our offices or other workplaces – like at conference – you get the flexibility and support to work from home or remotely.

What we offer in return: 

• A competitive salary + bonus
• 24 days annual leave
• 4 volunteering days annually
• Day off for your birthday
• Pension contributions
• Medical insurance for self and dependants; life cover and personal accident cover for self
• Seasonal social and charitable events
• Training and development
• Tools and equipment for remote working

We want all our candidates to shine in our recruitment process. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to ensure you are able to show us your best self. This could include having the application form in a different format, more time for questions, or anything else – please ask us, we are happy to be flexible! Please contact [email protected]

Being Yourself at Taylor & Francis:

If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and make a contribution regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life.

Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit based factor.

If you have a disability, or face another barrier, and would like to request an adjustment to assist your participation in the hiring process and/or in the advertised position, please contact [email protected]. Your request will be reviewed and considered in the strictest confidence.

We genuinely care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about. To find out more about our business and the great career opportunities please go to our Careers Site: http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/careers

Or better yet check out our LinkedIn ‘Life’ Page, highlighting our accomplishments, employees, and company culture. It’s also a good way of meeting our recruitment team, who will be happy to advise you on your journey here at T&F.