Technical Lead

Are you looking to leverage your tech skills to make a real and lasting positive impact at a global scope? Searching for a role in Tech for Good? Or just looking for a more fulfilling career? At UNDO we are on a mission to tackle the greatest challenge of our time: the climate crisis, and a role in our engineering team could be exactly the opportunity you’re looking for!

We are a fast-growing for-profit (but 100% mission driven) business that is already one of the biggest carbon removal companies in the world. In our first year, with 70+ people across multiple locations, including the UK, US and mainland Europe, we have ongoing Uk and US operations and partner with some big players, including Stripe, and some big customers like Microsoft. 

Thanks to our industry leading operations, science and commercial teams, UNDO is already at the forefront of carbon removal – pioneering the development of Enhanced Rock Weathering as an affordable, highly scalable approach that will comprise a major part of the solution we need to tackle climate change.  But this is only the start - we have ambitious plans aligned with great funding, excellent people and an inclusive team. Join us and be part of something huge. 

About the role
 
We currently have a team of nine and continue to build out an agile, fast moving team that can deliver the technology required to support the business as it scales, and that will underpin the next stages of the company’s growth. 

We are looking for a proven tech lead to be the foundation of the team as it grows, and specifically to:

- Be the overall technical lead, taking full responsibility for our complete solution architecture and (in collaboration with the frontend lead) technical responsibility for all of the work that the team delivers.

• Line manage, coach and develop two backend engineers on the team.

• (initially) roll their sleeves up and get stuck in with helping to build the tech required, but there is the option for the role to become more management focussed over time, potentially evolving into an Engineering Manager/Head of Engineering role.

Right now the key products that the team are developing are the following, but the focus will evolve over time and so overall technical judgement is more important than experience in any one area or technology:

- A custom SaaS platform to support project developers carrying out Enhanced Rock Weathering projects, and the subsequent generation of verified Carbon Removal Credits (Microsoft Power Apps, C#, Python, React, TS, Azure)

- Computational modelling for accurately predicting future Carbon Sequestration. (Python, Azure HPC).

- E-commerce offerings and secure client portals (TBD)

- Data storage, ETL, analysis and reporting (TBD)

If you are motivated by the idea of having true impact at global scale and are interested in joining our team, we’d love to hear from you.

About you

You are passionate about our objectives and goals as a company and driven by the opportunity to have real impact on a global scale.   

Tech lead

- You are a highly skilled software engineer with experience architecting, delivering and deploying a range of production quality, full stack solutions in the public cloud. You have proven ability across the development lifecycle, from rapid MVP through to fully hardened business critical applications – able to make the right trade-offs at each level – and from defining high level architecture through to delivering effective test strategies.

- You are a skilled IC in a range of languages and technologies (C# and Python ideal!). However your depth of engineering judgement is sufficient that, as the tech lead, you can effectively hold the team to account for the technical decisions made and the solutions delivered – even when these involve languages or technologies where you are not an expert IC yourself.

• You are an adept problem solver with a growth mindset. You aren’t phased by technical challenges that you haven’t faced before, or that cannot be solved with the existing tools in your toolkit, and you back yourself to find effective solutions.  

- You keep up to date with emerging technologies and are able to ramp up quickly and apply these when they are a good solution for the problem at hand. 

• Whilst comfortable with traditional development and test practises for building solutions you are also a pragmatist who is equally adept at leveraging existing solutions and tooling where they are available.  

Translation of business need

- You have the ability to take a high-level business need and work with stakeholders collaboratively to tie down the detailed requirements, spec an appropriate solution, and build a roadmap for delivering it.

- You are comfortable in a rapidly changing, dynamic environment where the needs of your consumers are constantly evolving.

Management 

- You understand how to help build high performing, happy and innovative agile teams that empower their members to deliver maximum business impact. 

• You have a proven track record of managing backend SWEs, able to effectively coach, mentor, develop and motivate your reports.

• You have strong communication skills and build effective working relationships both within your team, but also with stakeholders across the business.  

Working environment

We are a fully remote company, however…

- We are looking for candidates based in the UK (and who have a permit to work in the UK)

• If you wish to work out of an office then we have a great shared working space in central London – even if you are going to be primarily remote then we encourage people to come in once or twice a month just to help with getting to know everyone!

What you'll get when you join us

• Salary based on experience up to ~£100k + share options in UNDO.
• Annual review and performance building framework
• Individual development budget
• Professional membership fees paid for
• Enhanced annual leave and other optional leave such as volunteer, company sick and dependent leave
• Enhanced Family Policies
• Industry leading pension contributions of up to 17%.
• Employee Assistance Programme - a confidential helpful for you and your family. Financial, wellbeing and emotional support available   We're an equal opportunity employer. We are looking for the best candidate based on the value they can add. Our culture is hugely important to us and we welcome applicants of all race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. We encourage all candidates who believe they have the required skills and experience for any of our roles to apply. We also welcome applications from candidates who have a keen interest and passion for fighting climate change.