Principal Tech Team Lead (Front End)

• Manage and grow 3–5 Tech Team Leads, providing coaching on their leadership, delivery, and technical excellence
• Support career development plans and performance reviews for the Tech Team Leads and their direct reports
• Promote and exemplify the Xelix Culture Behaviours (Be Productive, Be Proactive, Keep Improving and Be Collaborative)
• Assist with defining team structures, e.g. squad formation, and defining ways of working for teams
• Define and maintain frontend architecture standards (React + TypeScript), ensuring consistency across squads
• Set conventions for component architecture, routing, state management, and data-fetching patterns
• Support the design system and shared component library direction, including governance and adoption
• Drive front end performance strategy and ensure teams have the tooling to measure and improve it
• Establish frontend observability best practices (error monitoring, user-impact visibility, and actionable dashboards)
• Stay hands-on by reviewing key code, participating in design sessions, and providing technical guidance
• Contribute to the codebase (Approx 30% of your time)
• Introduce tools and techniques to help the tech team go faster
• Ensure your teams are delivering code every day
• Define and champion the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) process
• Act as a quality guardian through code reviews, incident management and developer training
• Promote the use of AI by the engineering team
• Act as a trusted liaison between Senior Leadership and Tech Leads, balancing strategic priorities with team realities
• Facilitate collaboration across squads for shared services and platform initiatives

• Proven experience leading multiple teams or managers
• Deep experience building and scaling React applications (ideally with TypeScript)
• Strong understanding of front end architecture and modern web fundamentals (performance, browser constraints, and build tooling)
• Experience setting direction for testing strategy across the frontend (unit/component/e2e)
• Excellent coaching and mentoring skills
• ability to develop strong leaders
• Experience scaling engineering teams from 5 to 50 engineers is a plus
• Strong communication and influence skills, with a servant-leadership mindset

Experience scaling engineering teams from 5 to 50 engineers is a plus

• Competitive salary of £85,000-£125,000 depending on experience
• 27 days of annual leave (including 3 days Christmas closing) which increases up to 3 days based on tenure, with the option to roll over, buy or sell up to 3 days
• Hybrid working with one day a week from our dog-friendly Hoxton office
• On-site gym and cycle to work scheme
• Employee discount at over 100 retailers
• Comprehensive private medical & dental cover with Vitality
• Enhanced parental leave pay
• Learning & development culture – £1,000 personal annual budget
• We’re carbon-neutral and are working towards ambitious carbon reduction goals
• Lots of team socials & activities
• Annual team retreat