Prinicipal Technical Lead

RSSB is now seeking an experienced Principal Technical Lead to drive the hands-on technical delivery of a new greenfield industry services platform. This is an exciting delivery-focused role for a senior engineer who can lead by doing: making confident technical decisions, setting the quality bar, and guiding a multi-disciplinary sprint team to build and ship a complex system.
As Principal Technical Lead, you will deliver a suite of capabilities including workflow automation, document management, scheduling optimisation, real-time notifications, and integrated reporting. A range of internal and external systems including CRM, ERP, payment, and document signing services will be integrated. The close date of this role is 25th October 2026.
Responsibilities

• Own the technical delivery of the platform, ensuring the team consistently ships high-quality, production-ready increments.
• Ensure engineering standards are followed across the team: coding conventions, API design, security practices, and code review processes.
• Lead estimation, sprint planning, and decomposition of technical work; proactively identify and manage technical risk, dependencies, and blockers.
• Collaborate with the Delivery Manager and Product Owner to shape the backlog.
• Contribute directly to the codebase. Particularly on complex features, integration points, and technically critical components. Setting the standard for others to follow.
• Ensure alignment with the solution architecture function, clearly articulating technical constraints, risks, or emerging complexity with architectural implications, supported by evidence and proposed alternatives.
• Ensure application of secure-by-design principles and validate and refine Figma wireframes.
• Represent the team's technical work clearly and credibly to non-technical audiences.
• Define and enforce CI/CD pipeline standards using Azure DevOps, including branch strategy, build validation, deployment gates, and environment promotion.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a technical lead on a complex, multi-service platform, with direct responsibility for technical delivery quality and team output.
• Extensive C# and ASP.NET Core experience, including RESTful APIs, dependency injection, domain modelling, integration patterns, and performance considerations. Experience with Entity Framework Core code-first migrations and data modelling.
• Strong front-end engineering skills in React and TypeScript, including component architecture, state management, and integration with REST/SignalR backends.
• Solid understanding of event-driven architectures.
• Hands-on experience with PostgreSQL or comparable relational databases.
• Experience with API and application security.
• Practical knowledge of Python, including frameworks such as FastAPI.
• Practical knowledge of the Java stack.
• Proven experience with deploying and managing Azure cloud services.
• Experience deploying and operating containerised workloads in Kubernetes.
• Experience writing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps.
• Engagement with novel technology, such as AI, to maximise output.
• Experience collaborating with UX designers — reviewing wireframes and providing technical feedback.
• Agile delivery experience, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, estimation, and working productively with a Product Owner and Delivery Manager.
• Experience integrating with payment platforms (e.g. Stripe) and electronic signature services (e.g. DocuSign).
• Experience developing solutions within a regulated industry.
• Communicate effectively and share thoughts and ideas through methods appropriate to the audience.

Application guidance: CVs should be no longer than three pages.
Why Join RSSB?
We offer a competitive salary aligned to the public‑interest and not‑for‑profit sector, together with a strong total reward package. While this role is not positioned at top‑end technology salary levels, we believe our overall offer provides meaningful value through flexibility, benefits, and long‑term development. Our benefits package includes 30 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, private medical & dental cover and performance-related bonuses.
Ready to Apply?
If you're ready to take the next step in your career with RSSB, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now and help us shape the future of railway standards.
We understand the importance of work-life balance, and we offer our staff the flexibility to work within our core hours and the option to vary their location between both the office and home. If you are looking for further flexibility, speak to us at interview stage so that we can consider your request.
We value diversity and equal opportunities in employment and are committed to creating a workplace which is inclusive to everyone. As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, we encourage candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum criteria, to apply for our jobs. If you have applied under the Disability Confident Scheme, please let us know in advance. Find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at RSSB: Rail Safety and Standards Board Careers - VERCIDA.
If you require any reasonable adjustments with respect to our selection process including information in an alternative format, please contact us directly

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