{"id":832789,"url":"https://alion.io/job/ably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience","title":"Technical Lead, Developer Experience","company":{"id":12434,"name":"Ably Realtime","domain":"ably.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/ably-realtime","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-07T05:47:15Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":90000,"max_usd":180000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_cell","sample_n":47},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":false},{"name":"Node JS","optional":false},{"name":"React.js","optional":false},{"name":"Ruby on Rails","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":true},{"name":"Ruby","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-05T10:49:26Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-08T01:02:39Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":275,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":274},"description":"Our everyday digital experiences are in the midst of a realtime revolution. Whether chatting alongside a livestreaming event, receiving realtime financial information, or working with colleagues in an online collaborative environment - consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. At Ably we’re not just witnessing this revolution, we’re powering it - at scale.\nAt the heart of our mission lies a commitment to putting developers first. Ably provides a suite of products to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime, delivering billions of messages for millions of devices every day and supporting organizations like Harness, EA, Panasonic and HubSpot.\nWorking at Ably means helping to build the infrastructure and technology that will power and shape the future of the internet. The opportunity in front of us is immense. And we’d like your help.\nAbout this role\nAs the Technical Lead for Developer Experience at Ably you will report directly to our CTO and co-own the DevEx vision and strategy, transforming our dashboard, documentation platform, and control plane into a world-class experience. You are a senior, hands-on engineer who’s passionate about building for developers like yourself; someone who’ll obsess over the developer journey and elevate the user experience of the Ably platform.\nYou’ll blend deep full-stack expertise with a strong product mindset and lead a team of five engineers where the feedback loop is immediate, because you and your team are the target users of the very ecosystem you are building.\nDay to day you will\nObsess over developer experience. You’ll have broad responsibility for elevating how developers interact with Ably’s platform and services, partnering with the DevEx PM as a unified leadership team to deliver a developer experience that becomes a reference point for the industry.\nLead technical execution and vision. You’ll lead a team of five engineers building customer-facing web applications and own the technical architecture and design decisions for our dashboard, docs platform, marketing website, and billing UI.\nDrive a product-first engineering culture. You’ll foster an environment where engineers are themselves principal stakeholders of product features, and obsess over customer outcomes. You’ll challenge the \"feature factory\" mentality and build a team that takes true ownership of the product.\nThrive in a rapid iteration environment. You’ll operate in a high-velocity workspace where PMs, customers, and engineers co-create features. You’ll lead the team in working full-stack to iterate, improve, and ship improvements quickly.\nChampion AI-assisted development. You’ll be a catalyst for AI adoption across the team. You’ll leverage LLMs and AI tools to accelerate velocity without compromising on engineering integrity.\nGuide engineering outcomes and quality. You’ll set and enforce high standards for code review, testing, and production readiness. You will participate in incident response and coordinate with the Infrastructure team on platform dependencies and deployments.\nMentor and grow the team. You’ll manage performance, career development, and hiring. You will hold the team accountable for delivery commitments while providing the mentorship needed to turn engineers into product-minded leaders.\nWe'd love to talk if you have\nA natural empathy for developer customers because you are the target audience. You are genuinely excited about building developer tools and instinctively understand what good looks like. You're fluent in API design, documentation, and the nuances that differentiate a great developer journey.\nExtensive experience leading teams at B2B SaaS or API-first companies. You have a track record of building product-minded engineering cultures where teams take initiative and ownership of product outcomes.\nA strong software engineering background with expertise in React, TypeScript, and modern JavaScript, alongside backend experience in Ruby on Rails or Node.js. You're comfortable writing code and building prototypes using our APIs, and have built and shipped customer-facing web applications at scale.\nAn AI-first mindset. You champion the use of LLMs and AI tools as productivity multipliers for the team. You see AI as an enabler for higher velocity and output, not a replacement for engineering judgment.\nExperience at a startup or growth-stage company or adaptability to thrive in a fast-paced, agile environment with a focus on rapid iteration. To be effective in this role you’ll need excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.\nBonus points if you have\nExperience delivering solutions used by software developers (developer tooling or APIs) or similar technical personas.\nAn understanding of pub/sub and familiarity with distributed systems and event based architectures.\nWhat’s it like to work at Ably?\nWe’re tackling planet-scale problems and our ambitions are a testament to that. You’ll join a successful, deeply motivated and collaborative team that thrives on innovation, experimentation and autonomy. To get a sense of life at Ably, visit our careers page. You can also read about the origins of Ably's core values on our blog.\nWe believe in fostering a culture that's built on inclusivity and mutual respect among all team members, and we recognise that each individual is different and will want to be supported in their role in different ways. We provide a range of perks and benefits to aid folks' development and wellbeing, allowing them to be their best selves and do great work.\nA remote-first and flexible work environment. UK-based teams come together in person once per month in our London hub (next to Old Street) and we get together as a company twice per year. Aside from that, you’re welcome to work wherever suits best for you.\nEquity. We’re a growing start-up and we want all team to members to share in the success of the company through our EMI share options programme.\nEnhanced holiday allowance. Our policy provides Ablyans with 28 days of paid annual leave (27 regular days, plus a day off to enjoy your birthday).\nEnhanced parental leave package, so that you can take the time you need to get to know your new family member, rest and recover.\nHome workstation budget of £500 on joining (and £150 p/a thereafter), so that your home office is set up to serve you well and that you have everything you need to work comfortably.\nPersonal learning and development budget of £1000 annually, and 5% L&D time during working hours to focus on improving your skillset.\nPrivate healthcare with BUPA.\nMedical cash plan to cover a range medical and dental costs.\nMental wellbeing coaching and counselling from Self Space.\nMonthly wellbeing budget via Juno.\nLife assurance and income protection.\nAccess to Tech & Cycle to Work schemes.\nWeekly snack allowance for our end-of-week “Need To Know” meeting.\nA fully-paid one-month sabbatical after five years with Ably.\nDiversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Ably\nWe believe our differences as individuals is what makes us great. Our people are at the heart of what we do, and we encourage everyone to be their most authentic self at Ably: we see inclusivity and openness as fundamental to creating long-term success as an organization. We encourage applications from all backgrounds regardless of age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, race, religion, educational background or neurodiversity. Ably has an amazing opportunity ahead of us, and we want anyone to be able to contribute to that opportunity.\nIf you enjoy working as part of a technology company, value open source, and love solving hard problems - then we’d love to hear from you, regardless of whether you fit the job description exactly or not. If in doubt, drop us an email; we’d be more than happy to give you some advice on your application.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7869,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Annual leave","Equity","Flexible schedule","Home office","Parental leave","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Integration & API Management","Developer Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-12T17:21:39Z"},{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-25T17:44:48Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Skilled Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-07T06:21:01+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":5,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.181,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":274,"expected_fill_days":40,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-07T05:47:15Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/ably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/ably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-08T02:39:02Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4574,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":426,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-09T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":12434},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=12434"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/ably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fably-realtime-technical-lead-developer-experience"}]}