Technical Lead

Job Description

Overview

Join an award-winning organisation recognised for its technology and innovation. Registers of Scotland (RoS) is a world-leading pioneer in land and property registration. Our full-stack teams design, architect, and build all our registration products in-house. We work to create digital solutions for the people of Scotland. You will have the opportunity to nurture your creativity and develop with us through access to the latest data, software engineering and product delivery techniques.

The Role

As a Technical Lead you will lead and support one or more development teams, guiding the delivery of software solutions aligned with business, architectural and technical strategies. You will foster technical excellence, coach engineers, promote best practices, and build capability across the software development profession at Registers of Scotland (RoS).

On a typical day you will

• Provide technical leadership and formal line management for software developers, including conducting performance reviews, supporting career development, and managing wellbeing
• Ensure regular one-to-one discussions, setting clear objectives and providing constructive feedback to support individual growth and performance
• Ensure team alignment to architectural strategy
• Encourage and support individuals to set their own development objectives and regularly reflect on their progress
• Support and enable the design, development and delivery of secure, accessible, performant, and scalable services
• Embed best practice software engineering techniques including TDD, BDD, pair/mob programming, CI/CD and DevSecOps
• Foster and support Communities of Practice, cross-team initiatives, and shared learning opportunities
• Lead by example in coding, peer reviews, architecture discussions and issue resolution
• Facilitate team retrospectives, planning sessions and technical roadmap development
• Coach engineers across all grades, particularly supporting new entrants and junior developers
• Support recruitment, onboarding and professional development activities
• Encourage and support individuals to set their own development objectives and regularly reflect on their progress
• Ensure services are operable, resilient, and meet DR targets (e.g., 2hr RTO, zero RPO)
• Adhere to RoS engineering standards including continuous delivery, trunk-based development, infrastructure as code, and DevSecOps
• Follow agile principles and practices aligned to the Agile Manifesto
• Coordinate system integration and support integration testing activities
• Lead or participate in design and architecture reviews to ensure scalable, maintainable and efficient systems
• Champion secure development practices including CVE handling, threat modelling, and adherence to secure coding standards
• Monitor and manage service availability and capacity to meet business KPIs
• Identify and manage technical debt and delivery risks, ensuring long-term maintainability of systems
• Collaborate with product managers, delivery leads, architects and other stakeholders to align technical direction with business goals
• Promote inclusive design and accessibility best practices throughout the development lifecycle
• Design and deliver workshops to support engineering capability uplift and team learning
• Contribute to emerging ML/AI-enabled development tooling initiatives, promoting awareness and effective adoption within teams

Essential Criteria – Skills and Attributes for Success

Technical Experience: We will assess you against the following Technical Experience during the application and the assessment process:

• Proven leadership of cross-functional software delivery teams, guiding design and delivery of secure, accessible, performant and scalable services in the cloud.
• Hands-on engineering background with modern languages and frameworks, for example Java 11+, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript with Spring Boot, Flask, React or Next.js.
• Strong DevOps experience, including CI/CD (e.g. Jenkins or GitLab CI), containerisation (Docker), infrastructure as code (CDK, CloudFormation or Ansible) and DevSecOps practices.
• Practical use of AWS services such as Lambda, API Gateway, S3, Aurora and IAM, with awareness of Azure; comfortable operating on Kubernetes/OpenShift.
• Test automation at multiple levels, for example Cypress, Jest, React Testing Library and consumer-driven contract testing; quality tooling such as SonarQube.
• Monitoring and operability experience using tools such as Grafana, Kibana, CloudWatch and X-Ray; proven ability to meet resilience and DR objectives.
• Sound architectural grounding in microservices, serverless and event-driven patterns, including DDD, integration design and performance considerations.
• Demonstrable commitment to secure development, including CVE handling, threat modelling and secure coding standards.
• Experience coaching others in engineering excellence (TDD/BDD, pair or mob programming, trunk-based development) and growing profession capability.
• Ability to balance near-term delivery with long-term sustainability, actively managing technical debt and risks in partnership with product and delivery leads.
• Proven experience in leading software delivery teams in agile environments.
• Strong coaching and mentoring skills with a track record of capability-building.
• Excellent understanding of modern software development, architecture and infrastructure.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, prioritising delivery and enabling long-term technical sustainability.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Behaviours

• Creates a safe environment for challenge and new ideas, recognising and rewarding innovation that adds value.
• Simplifies and improves engineering processes using automation, CI/CD and DevSecOps to boost efficiency and quality.
• Anticipates the impact of change on people, culture and users, and plans accessible, inclusive roll-outs.
• Spots early warning signs when things are going off track and acts quickly to course-correct.
• Promotes the smart use of technology and data to modernise public services and reduce waste.

Stage One – Application Process

To apply, click on ‘Apply now’ and complete the online application form. You will need to submit:

1. A CV outlining your career history and how you meet the technical experience criteria (max 4 pages).
2. Responses explaining how you meet the required behaviours aspects of the role (maximum 300 words per answer in the spaces provided).
3. As part of the application process you will receive an online assessment invitation via Hackerrank and you will have 3 days to complete it.

Stage Two – Assessment

If successful at application stage, you will be invited to an in-person interview which will include the following:

• Behavioural interview based on the advertised behaviours
• Technical interview based on the technical experience is required for the role

Information on Success Profiles

For further information on success profiles, visit our Success Profiles .

Recruitment timeline

• Closing date: 30th October
• Hackerrank assessment sent: 31st October
• Hackerrank assessment deadline: 2nd November at 23:59
• Application sift: 3rd November
• Invites to assessment: 7th November
• Interviews: Week commencing 10th or 17th November (subject to change)

Equal Opportunities and Inclusion

RoS is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified candidates. If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know via . More information is available on our EDI strategy and related pages.

Other Information

Security: Successful candidates must undergo a Basic Disclosure Scotland check. Individuals working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard checks. This post is part of the Digital, Data and Technology profession (DDAT) and attracts a pay supplement. This is a tool which RoS uses to benchmark our salaries against market rates. A review of the benchmark is undertaken every two years, and the supplement may go up or down with market activity. Advance notice will be given of any changes.

Additional Information

For further information relating to RoS, including: pay & benefits, the Civil Service Code, complaints process, and use of AI in the application process, please view our additional information page online. If you have any questions, please contact .