Technical Lead

Nando's · Putney

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TECHNICAL LEAD, DEPLOYMENT (WORKFORCE)

OVERALL PURPOSE

Lead the people, engineering and delivery of our Deployment team – the team that supports the operational elements of every Nandoca’s working life, from getting scheduled and showing up, to learning and developing in role.

As Technical Lead, you’ll own how the team runs and delivers – stand-ups, planning, backlog, architecture and solution design. You’ll also line-manage, grow and develop the engineers.

Your focus is the team and the engineering, rather than day-to-day stakeholder relationships. You’ll be pulled in early where engineering input matters most, such as feasibility discussions, estimating and technical discovery when the solution isn’t yet known.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll stay close to the code by reviewing, pairing and getting stuck into the hard problems, and you’ll own the bar for quality, resilience and security across everything the team ships. You’ll mostly drive that through the team, steering clear of the critical path, but it remains a core part of the role.

Coaching and growing engineers is central to this job. You might already be leading a team, or you might be a senior engineer with a strong track record of mentoring and coaching, ready to take that into formal team leadership for the first time.

Either way, we care that you build a team that is kind, high-performing and safe to be honest in.

THE DEPLOYMENT TEAM

Our remit is the operational backbone of every Nandoca’s working life, from scheduling and shift management through to learning, development and reward.We own the Labour Engine and Employee Services API, our integrations with Rotageek for scheduling and Workday to ensure Nandocas are paid on time, and the services behind Thrive that support learning and skills development.

We’re also actively refactoring and redesigning the Careers Site, with the aim of improving our employer value proposition (EVP), working closely with the Customer Web Experience team.

Our stack today is TypeScript and Node, with services built on Bun, Koa and PostGraphile, deployed on Google Cloud Run and Cloud Functions with Postgres via Cloud SQL, and infrastructure managed through Terraform.

The Careers Site work brings React, Next.js and Vercel into scope alongside our core backend services.We integrate closely with Workday and Okta, and we hold our tools with strong opinions, loosely held. We pick what is right for the job, and we’re always happy to move the team’s thinking forward.

STAKEHOLDERS

• Head of Engineering and Architecture and Head of Product and Delivery in the Nandoca delivery group
• Product Managers
• The Deployment engineering team – your team
• People & Operations teams
• Rotageek and other third-party vendors
• Other internal teams reliant on Employee API
• Nandocas across every restaurant – everyone who relies on us to get scheduled, paid and developed

RESPONSIBILITIES

Running the team and delivery

• Take ownership of how the team runs, including stand-ups, planning and backlog management.
• Own the team’s overall delivery, including representing it at the weekly delivery forum.
• Keep delivery flowing by spotting blockers early, balancing scope and making the calls that keep the team moving.

Technical direction and architecture

• Be accountable for the technical direction of the Deployment products, including architecture, solution design and the principles that keep our decisions coherent, scalable and sustainable for the long term.
• Keep the products healthy by understanding what we run, why we run it, how it connects to Workday, Okta and the wider Nandoca ecosystem, and where we need to change.
• Bring considered recommendations on new tools and approaches, moving the team’s engineering forward without chasing novelty for its own sake.

Quality, resilience and security

• Own the bar for engineering quality, reliability and security across everything the team ships. You’ll mostly drive this through the team, but it is yours to hold.
• Make resilience a first-class concern, designing for failure and keeping availability and recovery front of mind, particularly given how central scheduling and pay are to a Nandoca’s day.
• Lead our incident response and run blameless post-mortems, turning incidents into genuine learning and lasting fixes.
• Champion strong observability, logging, monitoring, alerting and tracing that enable us to spot and understand problems early.
• Build security in by design, from secure coding and dependency hygiene through to the data protection considerations behind employee and pay data.
• Keep testing practices, code quality and automation high, so quality is part of how we work rather than a final gate.

Leading and developing the team

• Line-manage a team of engineers through regular one-to-ones, clear feedback, development plans and support through their growth and career progression.
• Coach and mentor engineers at every level, with particular care for helping junior engineers build strong foundations.
• Set a clear technical vision for the team that connects day-to-day work to what matters for Nandocas and the business.
• Build a culture that is kind, accountable and safe to be honest in, where people take ownership and pride in what they ship.
• Play a leading role in hiring and in building a strong and diverse team over time.

Working with Product and Delivery

• Stay close to Product and Delivery, bringing engineering into the conversation early through feasibility discussions, rough effort estimates and technical discovery when the solution isn’t yet known.
• Surface dependencies and risks early, especially across the seams with the Workday and Okta platform teams.
• Partner closely with the Customer Web Experience team on the Careers Site redesign, bringing their Next.js and Vercel stack into how we deliver it.
• Work with our key vendors, including Rotageek, helping hold them to their commitments alongside Product and Delivery.
• Contribute to the wider engineering community at Nando’s, sharing patterns, knowledge and approaches that raise the bar for everyone.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

We’re looking for someone who has:

• Backend engineering expertise across TypeScript and Node, with hands-on experience of Bun, Koa and PostGraphile, or similar frameworks.
• Experience running services on Google Cloud, including Cloud Run, Cloud Functions and Cloud SQL, with infrastructure as code using Terraform.
• A strong, demonstrable track record of mentoring and coaching engineers, with real examples of people you’ve helped grow. This is the people-leadership evidence we care most about, whether or not you’ve formally managed anyone before.
• Experience owning how a team plans and delivers, including running stand-ups, planning and backlog management, and keeping delivery moving.
• The ability to set technical direction for a product, including solution design and principled decisions about architecture, tooling and build versus buy.
• A strong grasp of engineering quality, reliability and resilience, including testing strategy, observability and learning from incidents through blameless post-mortems.
• A practical, secure-by-design mindset and an understanding of how security and data protection shape engineering decisions, particularly around employee and pay data.
• Engineering opinions that hold up over time, with a bias towards lean delivery and long-term maintainability, held with enough humility to change your mind.
• The communication skills to explain technical choices and their alternatives clearly to engineers and the wider business.

You might also have:

• Formal line-management experience. This role does include line-managing engineers, but we don’t require you to have done it before. If you have a strong track record of mentoring and coaching and you’re ready to step into leading a team, we want to hear from you.
• Experience integrating with HR or workforce platforms such as Workday, or identity platforms such as Okta.
• Familiarity with scheduling or workforce management systems.
• Experience with modern CI/CD and Biome-based tooling.
• Familiarity with React and Next.js, or an appetite to pick them up for the Careers Site work.

YOU ARE

• Kind and empathetic – the sort of leader who brings out other people’s best work and builds a psychologically safe, happy team.
• People-focused and genuinely energised by growing engineers.
• A strong communicator who can bring engineering into a conversation clearly and early, then get back to leading the team.
• Passionate about the operational side of the Nandoca experience and staying close to where it is heading.
• Calm and clear-headed about trade-offs, weighing technical quality, Nandoca impact and team capacity.

EVERYONE IS WELCOME

At Nando’s, we know our best work comes from teams that reflect the full range of people we serve.

Inspired by our Southern African heritage, we’re committed to building an inclusive environment where everyone can bring their whole self to work, regardless of background, identity or life experience.

If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every single point above, please apply anyway. We care far more about your values, your curiosity and how you lead people than whether your CV ticks every box. Skills can be grown; the right mindset is what we’re really looking for.

We’ll consider any reasonable adjustments to support you through the recruitment process – just let us know what you need.

#LI-DNI

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