Tech Lead

Job Title: Tech Lead

Salary: £51,400 - £68,800

Location: Cambridge, Hybrid (2 days per week in the office)

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full-time (35 hours per week)

The Tech Lead at Cambridge University Press and Assessment plays a pivotal role in driving technical excellence and strategic execution within a multi-stakeholder environment. By providing technical leadership across the full technology stack, the Tech Lead, in collaboration with the architecture team ensures systems are designed for maintainability, extensibility, and long-term success. We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.

About the Role

We are seeking a Technical Lead to provide strategic technical leadership across our modernisation programme. In this role, you will design and deliver high-quality, scalable, and resilient applications that align with business goals while ensuring systems are built for long-term maintainability and adaptability. You will balance rapid delivery with architectural vision, driving innovation, automation, and performance improvements across the technology stack.

As a key leader, you will shape our cloud-native architecture, guide best practices, and mentor engineering teams to raise standards of quality, security, and resilience. You'll work closely with Product Owners, Delivery Managers, and cross-functional teams to align technical decisions with business outcomes, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning.

This is a pivotal opportunity to architect solutions that support the organisation's growth and transformation. From migrating core systems to the cloud and optimising CI/CD pipelines, to embedding security and scalability into every design decision, you'll play a critical role in evolving our platforms. You'll also help modernise legacy systems, explore emerging technologies, and ensure our platforms can meet the demands of the future.

If you are passionate about building resilient, future-ready systems, enjoy solving complex technical challenges, and thrive in a collaborative environment, we want to hear from you.

This position has been classified as a hybrid role, requiring the selected candidate to typically spend 40-60% of their time collaborating and connecting face-to-face at their dedicated location. Aside from our hybrid principles, other flexible working requests will be considered from the first day of employment, including other work arrangements should you require adjustments due to a disability or long-term health condition.

About You

You are a seasoned technical leader with the ability to balance strategic vision and hands-on expertise. You thrive in complex environments, ensuring architectural consistency, high-quality engineering, and alignment across global delivery teams. With a deep understanding of cloud-native systems, microservices, and modern delivery practices, you drive scalable solutions that meet business objectives while enabling teams to excel. You're also a strong mentor and collaborator, passionate about building high-performing teams and fostering innovation.

• Proven ability to define and enforce technical best practices across multi-team environments.
• Expertise in designing resilient, high-performance solutions and partnering with architects and Technical Leads to ensure scalability and maintainability.
• Strong knowledge of microservices, cloud deployments, and integration patterns to guide technology choices that support long-term objectives.
• Proficiency in AWS, Azure, and GCP with expertise in leveraging cloud-native services for compute, storage, and databases.
• Skilled at working with Delivery Leads, Product Owners, and Managers to ensure technical initiatives align with delivery milestones and business needs.
• Ability to refine technical requirements for clarity, efficiency, and execution.
• Experience supporting both onshore and offshore development teams, driving collaboration, knowledge sharing, and seamless integration.
• Leadership in code reviews, continuous improvement, and best practice adoption to maintain high engineering standards.
• Strong expertise in CI/CD pipelines, automation, and deployment strategies to optimise delivery efficiency and reliability.
• Knowledge of security frameworks and governance standards, ensuring robust and compliant solutions.
• Skilled in identifying and resolving bottlenecks, dependencies, and blockers impacting delivery timelines.
• Proficient in troubleshooting, debugging, and optimising performance for resilient, stable systems.
• Experience collaborating with Delivery Managers to proactively manage risks around scalability, security, and technical debt.
• Experienced in mentoring and leading teams, cultivating a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, effectively bridging technical teams, delivery stakeholders, and partner organisations.
• Proven track record in recruitment, training, and upskilling, building high-performing teams for long-term success.

For a detailed job description, please refer to the link at the bottom of the advert on our careers site.

We are a Disability Confident (DC) employer that is committed to equality and inclusion ensuring our recruitment process is accessible to all. The DC scheme's Offer of an Interview commitment applies to applicants who opt in, and disclose a disability or a long-term health condition, and best meet the minimum criteria for the role. In instances where interviewing all qualifying candidates is not practicable, we prioritise those who best meet the minimum criteria, as we would for applicants who do not have a disability or long-term health condition.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov.uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.

Rewards and benefits

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package , featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We aim to support candidates by making our interview process clear and transparent. The closing date for all applications will be 21 January 2026. We will review applications on an ongoing basis, and shortlisted candidates can expect interviews to take place onweek commencing 26 January 2026 or 2 February 2026. We aim to support candidates by making our interview process clear and transparent.

If you are shortlisted and progressed through the stages, you can expect:

• First stage in person interview at our offices in Cambridge. If you pass the first interview, you will be asked to complete a short online assessment, which will be sent to you virtually.
• Final stage interview: in-person at our offices in Cambridge.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You'll belong to a collaborative team that's exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe - for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it's safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities