We are a market-leading nature tech company on a mission to make nature measurable and actionable at scale. Our platform delivers vital insights on species, habitats, and nature-related risks, helping businesses across sectors - from mining and renewable to CGS and financial services - make smarter, more sustainable decisions.
As global leaders in biodiversity monitoring and eDNA analysis, we are transforming how nature is measured. Our technology makes biodiversity insights accessible, actionable, and scalable, powering change from conservation to industry. Recognised as Earthshot Prize Finalists 2024, BloombergNEF Pioneers 2024, World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers 2024, and part of the TechNation Future Fifty 2025, we are shaping the future of how organisations understand and protect nature.
As we enter a new phase of rapid global growth, we are seeking a Lead Software Engineer to drive the technical excellence of our client facing, biodiversity focused platform. You will be instrumental in shaping our engineering practices, mentoring the team, and ensuring the delivery of a robust, scalable, and reliable product. This is a hands-on role where you will provide thought leadership to a talented team of developers while contributing directly to key architectural and development decisions, with a strong appreciation for full-stack development.
What you'll do
- Define and implement engineering best practice: Lead the establishment and implementation of robust software development best practices. This includes setting standards for documentation, developing a consistent testing strategy, monitoring platform performance, and implementing automated CI/CD pipelines to speed up release cycles.
- Mentor and enable the team: Develop and deliver training to enable other team members to perform a broader range of software development operations, increasing team autonomy and empowering individuals to take ownership of key initiatives.
- Drive architectural simplicity and reliability: Champion a philosophy of architectural simplicity and proactively identify and address technical debt. Design and implement for future scale, removing potential obstacles as early as possible.
- Foster a culture of ownership and product/end-user awareness: Lead the team to take full ownership of their software from development to deployment and monitoring, promoting a product mindset that prioritises client needs.
- Champion engineering as a key driving force for growth: Build cross-functional relationships and understand business needs to problem-solve and enable teams to move quickly. Proactively communicate progress, concerns, and challenges to the wider team and stakeholders. Foster a culture of tech utilisation and AI adoption within the engineering team.
- Inform roadmap and prioritisation: Stay abreast of innovation in the sector, highlighting new opportunities to streamline and accelerate roadmaps, and extend our product offering.
What does success look like?
- A highly skilled engineering team, proactively seeking out ways to add value to clients and the wider business.
- High delivery velocity with projects delivered on time and deadlines being committed to and enforced.
- Strong communication channels between the Engineering team and the wider business.
- Implementation of value-add opportunities for clients through engineering quick wins and cross-utilisation of new capabilities and data sources.
- Development into a compelling Head of Engineering with direct line management responsibility
What you'll bring
We are looking for...
- Proven experience leading and mentoring engineering teams in a high-growth, agile environment.
- Deep expertise in designing, building, and operating scalable, data-intensive applications on cloud platforms (AWS and/or GCP).
- Strong, hands-on, full-stack software development background.
- Demonstrable experience with the challenges of building scalable data-driven platforms.
- Expertise in modern data architecture, cloud infrastructure (IaC, Kubernetes, Serverless), and DevOps practices (CI/CD, observability).
- Excellent communicator who can articulate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- A mission-driven individual with a genuine passion for NatureMetrics' mission.
- Familiarity with geospatial data analysis, frameworks, and formats.
- Experience with Earth Observation (EO) data and satellite imagery processing.
- Knowledge of building infrastructure to support AI/ML model training and deployment (MLOps).
- Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment, particularly within life sciences or environmental tech.
- Competitive salary
- Impactful work with a purpose-driven team
- Flexible work arrangements - this is a hybrid position, with the expectation that the successful applicant will attend the office 2-3 days a week depending on location
- Opportunities for professional growth
- Benefits package including salary sacrifice pension scheme prioritising sustainability; life assurance; Health insurance; Enhanced annual leave; Cycle to Work Scheme; enhanced family friendly policy.
We're a dynamic team passionate about nature and biodiversity and we take immense pride in our work and our impact. Join us on this journey!