Technical Lead
First seen by Alion on Oct 21, 2026.
The Role:
You will own technology at CommVersion end to end: architecture, delivery, quality, infrastructure, security, data and AI, and the team. You will be the CEO's technical partner on strategy, and on technical questions from investors, clients and partners. You will work as a peer to our Product Manager, who owns the roadmap and requirements. Our Head of Data and AI, and our IT and security lead, report to you.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You will review designs and pull requests and make architectural calls. You will not be a full-time individual contributor, but you will be close enough to the code to hold the technical bar.
Who we are:
Our mission is to maximize the conversion potential of EVERY website, turning live chat into an indispensable revenue solution for businesses across the world. And we do this through our SmartChat solution that has transformed live chat from a customer support cost to a conversion rate optimisation tool for over 500 global brands, supercharging their website performance in the process.
In ten years, we have grown from a founder-led business to a team of over 150 employees spanning four countries.
However, we are still at the tip of the iceberg. So, if you are looking to join a fast-paced ambitious company with a customer centric mindset, then look no further.
We run two products on one platform:
- CvHub, the operator platform for client configuration, leads, CRM delivery, reporting and AI features.
- AgentHub, the real-time workspace where our agents handle live chats across providers.
Behind them sit integrations with more than twenty CRMs and the main chat and messaging providers.
What you will own:
- Architecture and technical direction. Own the platform's architecture and keep it simple, safe and scalable. Make the calls on data, integration boundaries, real-time messaging and failure isolation.
- Data and databases. Own the health of our operational database and our analytical data: schema design, query performance, locking, replication, and the flow from production into the warehouse.
- Delivery. Run sprint and release planning with the Product Manager. Decide what ships and when, and make sure it lands well with Ops and clients, not just in production.
- Quality and reliability. Own our engineering standards, code review, automated testing (unit, Playwright end-to-end, system and soak tests), environments, CI/CD, observability, incident response and business continuity.
- Security and compliance. Own application and cloud security, GDPR data retention and PII handling, VAPT remediation, and our part of ISO-aligned controls.
- Technical discovery. Assess new client projects and roadmap ideas for feasibility, size and risk. Join client calls when a CRM or integration problem needs a senior technical voice.
- Data and AI. With our Head of Data and AI, set the direction for our AI features (automated first response, reply drafting, AI assist) and the data platform. Make sure they ship safely, with evaluation and feedback loops.
- The team. Lead, hire and grow a team of about sixteen across three groups. Run 1:1s, KRAs and appraisals, and grow our next layer of leads.
- Infrastructure, vendors and cost. Own the AWS estate (with our managed-service partner), tooling and vendor relationships, cloud and tooling spend, and the monthly engineering capitalisation reporting.
- AI-native engineering. We build with AI coding agents (Claude Code) and a repo-level review rubric. Keep that practice sharp, safe and accountable: you own what you ship, however it was written.
What We're Looking For:
Must Have:
- 10+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years leading engineering teams of 10-20 people, ideally including a data or ML function.
- Strong database knowledge. Deep PostgreSQL in production: schema and index design, query plans and tuning, transactions, isolation and locking, connection pooling, read replicas, and safe migrations on live data.
- Experience with data warehouses. Hands-on with a warehouse such as Redshift, Snowflake or BigQuery: dimensional modelling, ELT pipelines and orchestration (for example dbt and Airflow), and keeping analytical data consistent with the operational system.
- Deep hands-on TypeScript and Node.js. Strong backend design with NestJS (or similar), Redis and queues. Comfortable with React/Next.js frontends.
- Production experience on AWS, including Kubernetes or a managed equivalent. Observability, incident response and on-call.
- A record of raising engineering quality: code review standards, automated testing, CI/CD, environments.
- Experience with integration-heavy systems: third-party APIs, webhooks, retries, idempotency, data mapping.
- Security and data-protection judgement: GDPR, PII, authn/authz, dependency and supply-chain hygiene.
- A clear communicator with non-technical leaders, Ops and clients. You can explain a trade-off to a CEO and a CRM fault to a client.
Strong Plus:
- Real-time systems (WebSockets/Socket.IO), chat or contact-centre products.
- Has been through investor technical due diligence, or ISO 27001 / SOC 2.
- Works daily with AI coding agents, and has set team standards for them.
- Nx/pnpm monorepos; Playwright; Grafana/Loki/Sentry.
- Experience working with LLM features in production, alongside a data/ML team.
What we expect from our team:
We want to hire people who align with our values, building a positive and welcoming culture for all. Before applying, please read through our expectations of everyone that joins our team. You will enjoy working here if you are...
Performance driven:
- You think targets are there to be broken - we love the chase and we are constantly pushing to rise to the top, thriving on the challenges that it brings.
- Your time efficient - we are hard workers and proud, but enjoy our home lives, too. Working hard means using your time effectively.
- You bring your best self to work performance is more than just numbers; it is how you turn up, your desire to do right by our customers, and your drive for growth.
Thoughtfully innovative:
- You are strategic - our bold company goals require sublime team planning today.
- You look at the bigger picture love the people that are not just looking at what has to be done, but more why they are doing it.
- You are interested in fast-paced growth start up culture.
Always Remarkable:
- You want your career to accelerate. We love finding extraordinary people and helping them in an intensive but highly rewarding role.
- You are an honest team player. We move fast and being accountable as we quickly expand is imperative.
- You get stuck in regardless. No matter the job title, it is important that you understand the wider business, too.
The details:
Work Experience: 10+ years
Department: Technology
Position: Full-time
Working Days: Mon-Fri
Hours: 9 hrs
WFH/WFO: WFO
Interview Rounds: Screening, Technical leadership, Practical exercise, Panel, Final
Skills
IT Product Development, Technical Architect, IT Project Management