Lead Developer

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced and hands-on technical leader to join our growing Technology team as Tech Lead for General Insurance. This is a senior individual contributor and people leadership role, responsible for providing technical direction and line management across four development squads based in Hyderabad, spanning multiple product lines and technology stacks across the global general insurance market.

The squads under your technical leadership are:

• IVI (Insurance Vehicle Intelligence)
• COA (Claims Operations & Administration)
• AIS (Advanced Insurance Services)
• Property UK

You will combine hands-on technical contribution with day-to-day line management of developers across all four squads. Working closely with Product, Architecture, QA, and senior stakeholders, you will set technical standards, mentor the team, and ensure consistently high-quality delivery across a modern, AWS-hosted estate.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & People Management

• Line manage developers across the IVI, COA, AIS, and Property UK squads, providing regular 1-to-1s, performance reviews, and ongoing career development support.
• Mentor and upskill developers at all levels, conducting code reviews and championing best practices, clean code, and continuous learning across the teams.
• Act as the primary technical escalation point across the squads, resolving blockers and maintaining team momentum and cohesion.
• Support skills development planning across the squads, identifying capability gaps and working with management to address them.
• Foster a positive, inclusive, and collaborative team environment that values open communication and mutual respect.

Technical Standards & Architecture

• Define and enforce technical standards, patterns, and best practices across the full technology stack - .NET, Java, and PHP backends; React, Angular, AngularJS, and Vue.js frontends.
• Contribute to and guide architectural decisions for new features and legacy modernisation efforts, ensuring solutions are robust, scalable, secure, and maintainable.
• Promote AWS-native approaches including serverless, microservices, and containerisation (Docker), and help the teams adopt modern cloud engineering practices.
• Champion the effective use of SQL Server as the primary data store, supporting teams in writing performant, well-structured queries and data models.
• Drive code quality across all squads through hands-on code reviews, pair programming, and enforcement of clean code and SOLID principles.

Delivery & Agile Execution

• Ensure all four squads operate effectively within an Agile/Scrum delivery model, participating in and facilitating ceremonies including sprint planning, Three Amigos, retrospectives, and showcases.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and UX to translate business requirements into well-scoped, value-driven technical deliverables.
• Monitor delivery velocity, quality, and risk across squads, providing clear and timely reporting to senior leadership.
• Identify and remove impediments early, driving resolution across team and organisational boundaries.

Cross-Squad Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as the key technical point of contact across the four Hyderabad squads, liaising effectively with UK-based counterparts, architects, product managers, and business stakeholders.
• Facilitate knowledge-sharing and technical alignment across the squads, preventing siloing and promoting reuse of patterns, components, and solutions.
• Contribute to sprint planning, estimation, and roadmap discussions, providing clear engineering perspective on feasibility, effort, and risk.

Documentation, Support & Governance

• Ensure squads produce and maintain high-quality technical documentation, operational runbooks, and architectural decision records.
• Provide or oversee third-line support as required, supporting root cause analysis and post-incident reviews.
• Enforce and evolve standards around source control (Azure DevOps), CI/CD pipelines, and deployment governance across all teams.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation

• Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends relevant to the general insurance domain and advocate for their adoption where beneficial.
• Drive process and tooling improvements across the squads through proactive identification of inefficiencies and retrospective actions.
• Encourage and support the use of AI-assisted development tooling (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to enhance developer productivity.

Technical Expertise

Backend Technologies

• Proven commercial experience across multiple backend stacks, with depth in one or more of:
• .NET / C# (Framework and Core)
• Java (v8-17+), ideally with Spring / Hibernate
• PHP (modern frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony)
• Strong SQL proficiency, with hands-on experience of Microsoft SQL Server in a production environment.
• Familiarity with NoSQL databases and event-driven or message-based architectures.
• Solid understanding of design patterns, Clean Code principles, and SOLID architecture.

Frontend Technologies

• Working knowledge of modern frontend frameworks, with experience across:
• React
• Angular / AngularJS
• Vue.js
• Proficiency in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript (ES6+); experience with TypeScript is advantageous.
• Familiarity with RESTful API integration and experience working alongside UX/design teams.

Cloud & Infrastructure

• Demonstrable experience designing, deploying, and operating applications within AWS - including services such as Lambda, Step Functions, S3, RDS, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, and CloudFormation or Terraform.
• Practical understanding of containerisation with Docker; Kubernetes experience is a plus.
• Awareness of cloud security, IAM, and cost optimisation best practices.

Tooling & Process

• Skilled in Azure DevOps for source control, work item tracking, and CI/CD pipeline management; Jenkins knowledge is advantageous.
• Experience working within Agile/Scrum delivery environments at a leadership or management level.
• Familiarity with TDD/BDD approaches and automated testing frameworks.
• Experience with AI-enhanced development tooling such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar.

Leadership & Domain Competencies

• Proven experience in line management or technical mentorship of developers across multiple seniority levels, including performance conversations and career development support.
• Comfortable leading across distributed or cross-timezone teams, with the ability to build trust and maintain technical alignment across geographies.
• Strong communicator, able to engage clearly with developers, QA, product managers, and non-technical stakeholders alike.
• Able to balance hands-on technical contribution with leadership responsibilities - knowing when to code, when to coach, and when to escalate.
• A genuine passion for technology, continuous learning, and helping others grow.
• Experience in the general insurance industry - particularly within motor claims, property, or insurance operations - is highly advantageous.