The Difference You Will Make
As Lead Engineer, you will combine hands‑on technical contribution with the day‑to‑day leadership and people management of a software engineering squad within our new engineering department. You will work alongside your team, writing and reviewing code, guide technical decisions, maintain engineering standards, support the growth of individual engineers, and act as the connective tissue between your squad and the broader engineering organisation.
You’ll work closely with the Director of Engineering and leaders from adjacent disciplines to ensure your team’s work aligns with our technical direction and product priorities.
You’ll lead with empathy and clarity to foster a culture of continuous improvement, shared ownership, and engineering excellence within your squad. Team leadership roles are vital to our success so you will play a key role in helping to create a diverse, welcoming and inclusive environment that is psychologically safe, where everyone can be their authentic selves and do their best work, every day.
Your Role
Grow your team
- Support your engineers’ career development and build a motivated, high‑performing squad through regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and by creating individual growth plans.
- Mentor junior and mid‑level engineers – fostering a continuous improvement culture and helping the team build technical confidence and skills.
Contribute technically
- Write and review code as an active contributor to your squad’s delivery – guiding by example on quality, maintainability, and best practice.
- Guide architectural decisions and technical direction within your squad and contribute to broader engineering discussions.
Drive delivery and planning
- Plan and manage squad capacity across projects – forecast hiring needs and allocating resources effectively to meet delivery commitments.
- Participate in roadmap, refinement, and sprint planning sessions – working closely with Product colleagues and adjacent discipline leads, providing technical input, ensuring clear scoping, and surfacing dependencies and risks early.
Uphold engineering standards
- Define and sustain coding standards and review processes – conducting code reviews focused on quality, maintainability, and consistency.
- Track and manage technical debt within your squad – balancing debt reduction with feature delivery and escalating systemic issues where needed.
Ensure operational excellence
- Participate in the in‑hours and out‑of‑hours incident management rotas, providing hands‑on technical support and clear, calm communication during high‑pressure situations.
- Advocate for the “you build it, you run it” ethos – ensuring your squad is equipped to deploy, operate, and support the systems they build as part of a DevOps culture where second line out‑of‑hours support is the expectation.
The Skills You Will Bring
Technical capability
- Solid hands‑on software engineering experience, with active proficiency in full‑stack or backend development – enough to contribute meaningfully to delivery and guide technical decisions.
- Modern engineering practices – CI / CD, version control workflows, code review, testing strategies, and cloud‑based deployment.
- Agile methodologies and the experience to implement the right approach for your squad’s context.
- AI trends within engineering, an interest in AI‑assisted development tooling (e.g. Copilot, Claude) and how it can improve productivity and code quality.
Leadership and people skills
- Leading or mentoring with a servant‑leadership mindset and a genuine focus on the growth and wellbeing of your colleagues.
- Communicating with a range of people and organisational roles, managing stakeholder expectations, representing your team’s needs, and fostering collaboration across multidisciplinary teams.
- Acting as an escalation point for your team, supporting them through complex or time‑sensitive situations.
- Taking an organised and structured approach to planning, managing priorities and keeping delivery on track.
Industry and delivery experience
- Leading a software engineering team or squad in a product‑led, multidisciplinary organisation, with a track record of consistent, quality delivery.
- Working in a team operating agile software delivery practices and principles, SCRUM experience is a plus.
- Adapting to evolving business priorities communicating calmly and clearly when under pressure.
- Media, audio streaming, or consumer platform experience is a plus.
Working Pattern and Location
This is a permanent, hybrid, full‑time role with an in‑office presence twice a week in our Manchester hub. Participation in in‑hours and out‑of‑hours incident management rotas is required.
Why Join Us?
- The chance to be part of a team building platforms that reach millions of listeners across Europe, with real impact on the products people use every day.
- A growing engineering organisation investing heavily in its people, practices, and technology – with genuine support for leadership development.
- A collaborative, product‑led environment where engineering has a clear and respected voice in shaping business outcomes.
- An environment that values empathy, accountability, continuous learning, and engineering excellence.
Interview Process
- Intro call with Talent Acquisition
- Remote technical interview
About Bauer Media Group
We are a media business focused on creating content that matters to millions of people across Europe. Our offering extends from print and online publishing to audio broadcasting and entertainment, alongside investments in other media related sectors. With more than 500 million copies sold each year, we are one of Europe’s largest Publishers. From women’s and celebrities’ magazines to TV listings to food and special interest, we own some of the most popular publishing brands in Germany, UK, Poland and France – both digital and print. But not only that. Reaching over 61 million listeners weekly, we operate over 150 radio and podcast brands in nine countries, spanning the UK, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Portugal. Family‑owned in the 5th generation, Bauer Media focuses on the long‑term, with a consumer‑first mindset that guides us across our diverse portfolio. Our workforce of 12,000 shares a common purpose: to deliver content and services that enrich people‘s everyday lives.
What’s In It For You
- You’ll have 28 days holiday, bank holidays & 2 volunteer days to use.
- Your development matters, so access to our internal training provider – Bauer Academy, is a huge win.
- We have enhanced Maternity/Adoption, Paternity and Shared Parental Leave Pay.
- You’ll have the opportunity for flexible working.
- And much more! Find the full details of our benefits here
We are an international employer and equal opportunities are important to us. That’s why we welcome everyone in their uniqueness, regardless of e.g. religion, gender, skin colour, disability in our house.
We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or a long‑term health condition, and need us to make any reasonable adjustments or do anything differently during any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know by emailing careershub@bauermedia.co.uk
We are actively recruiting for this position, so the job advert may close earlier than expected.
If you have any feedback regarding our UK recruitment process, please email careershub@bauermedia.co.uk — we would love to hear from you.
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