Lead Software Engineer

Jet2.com and Jet2holidays are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our high-performance Search team. This is an exciting hands-on role where you will be responsible for the functionality that powers the customer's first interaction with us, working across a breadth of systems and technologies to deliver value and Create Memories for both our business and our customers.  

This is a role for a technical leader who loves data and solving complex problems. You won't just be building features; you'll be optimizing the engine that drives our business, ensuring that when a customer dreams of a holiday, we find it for them instantly and accurately. 

As our Lead Software Engineer, you’ll have access to a wide range of benefits including:

• Hybrid working
• Colleague discounts on Jet2.com flights and Jet2holidays packages
• Access to a generous discretionary profit share scheme

What you'll be doing:
 
As our Lead Software Engineer, you will be leading a fast-paced scrum team, made up of a lead engineer, software engineers, automation and manual test engineers, product owners and business analysts. You will also: 

• Design and code low-latency search algorithms and data structures in the core search applications, explicitly optimizing for performance to handle high-concurrency traffic without degrading the customer experience.
• Creating a vision for designing and building robust and scalable systems.
• Making architectural decisions in collaboration with the Architecture Team focusing on high-availability, low-latency, and caching strategies to handle massive user load during peak booking periods. 
• Supporting team activities through the software development lifecycle such as planning and estimation.
• Line managing and mentoring team members to facilitate their growth and progression.
• Championing current and new coding standards and practices.
• Driving a culture of continuous improvement. 
• Improving the developer experience through automation & tooling. You will drive the implementation of CI/CD pipelines that ensure safety and quality, removing the need for manual intervention in live environments. 
• Implementing observability and metrics within the search stack. You will ensure the team has visibility into application performance, search accuracy, and error rates to facilitate rapid debugging and data-driven improvements. 

What is the tech stack? 
 
The search platform has a wide range of technologies including: 

• C#, .NET Core, and Web API. 
• Event driven architectures (Kafka) 
• RESTful Microservices – light-weight efficient, decoupled APIs that scale well. 
• Storage technologies like SQL, Redis.
• Cloud technologies (AWS) 
• Containerised environments using Kubernetes, Docker and CI/CD pipelines. 
• Automated Testing frameworks with a strong focus on Performance and Load Testing (k6) alongside BDD. 

What you'll have:
 
Our Lead Software Engineer will have deep technical understanding of Search Engines and caching mechanisms in a high-traffic e-commerce environment, be extremely passionate about technology and have some previous line management experience. You will also: 

• Have strong written and verbal communication skills and be comfortable communicating and building relationships with stakeholders across the business.
• Have prior technical leadership and mentoring experience and be willing to enhance your skills in this area to support the growth of software development team.
• Be an excellent role model for the team and colleagues, with an approachable nature and the ability to work as part of a team.
• Be the point of contact for expert guidance and team support. 
• A mindset focused on DevSecOps and Automation. You prefer building tools and guardrails over manual processes and have experience creating observable systems. 
• Experience managing Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and understanding the impact of latency on user behaviour.