Lead Software Engineer

🚀 Senior / Lead Software Engineer 🌍 Wakefield, WF4 / 3-days a week in the office 💰 Up tp £70,000 Impactive IT is exclusively recruiting for a Senior or Lead Software Engineer to take technical ownership of a complex, multi-tenant SaaS platform used by equipment rental businesses across the UK. The platform manages everything from hire contracts and fleet management to transport planning, route optimisation, invoicing and integrations with accounting systems including Sage and Xero. This isn’t a role where you’ll simply pick up tickets and build individual features. You’ll be the technical authority for the platform owning its architecture, setting the engineering direction and making the key decisions around how it evolves. You’ll work closely with the wider business to turn product strategy into a clear technical plan, while remaining hands-on with the most important parts of the system. They’re a small, fast-moving team, so they need somebody comfortable taking genuine ownership and making things happen. What you’ll be doing: 🔹 Owning the architecture and long-term technical direction of the platform 🔹 Designing and delivering major new modules and integrations, including route optimisation, customer portals and accounting platform integrations 🔹 Deciding which technologies, patterns and engineering standards the team uses 🔹 Working with leadership and product owners to shape the roadmap, assess feasibility and challenge requirements where there’s a better solution 🔹 Remaining hands-on and building the most technically important parts of the platform 🔹 Improving development practices across testing, code reviews, CI/CD, releases and observability 🔹 Mentoring engineers and reviewing their designs and code 🔹 Taking ownership of platform reliability across multiple customers and tenants 🔹 Identifying technical debt and creating a sensible modernisation plan without disrupting live customers 🔹 Leading the team’s use of AI-assisted engineering tools, including Claude Code, to improve delivery speed and quality without lowering standards The technology: 💻 PHP 8 with a layered controller, service and repository architecture 💻 Microsoft SQL Server 💻 Vue 3 and TypeScript 💻 RabbitMQ 💻 GitHub and GitHub Actions 💻 Playwright and PHPUnit 💻 Sentry and Jira 💻 Sage 50, Sage 200, Sage Business Cloud and Xero integrations What we’re looking for: ✅ Extensive commercial software engineering experience, including working at Senior, Lead or Principal level ✅ Genuine architectural ownership and experience designing substantial production systems not just individual features ✅ Strong backend engineering experience, ideally with PHP ✅ The technical breadth to make sensible decisions across the full stack ✅ Deep relational database knowledge, including data modelling, query performance and indexing ✅ Experience defining engineering standards and getting a team to adopt them ✅ The confidence to lead technical conversations with non-technical stakeholders, explain trade-offs and push back when necessary ✅ Practical experience using and leading AI-assisted software development ✅ Experience working with multi-tenant SaaS platforms at scale Experience with SQL Server, Vue.js, TypeScript, queue-based systems, accounting software, ERP, logistics or optimisation platforms would be particularly useful. This is a brilliant opportunity for somebody who wants real influence over a business-critical product. You’ll have the authority to make technical decisions, improve how the team works and shape how the platform develops over the coming years. Get in touch with Matt at Impactive if you are interested or apply directly for a confidential conversation. #SoftwareEngineering #LeadDeveloper #SeniorDeveloper #PHPDeveloper #SoftwareArchitecture #TechJobs #SaaS #Hiring