Digital Factory – Tech Lead - Backend, .Net, Assistant Director

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Role Overview

The Tech Lead - Backend (.NET) serves as the senior technical authority for backend engineering in the .NET ecosystem within the Digital Factory. The role provides hands-on technical leadership, sets engineering direction and guides complex solution design and delivery across multiple initiatives. Working closely with the Engineering Manager, Architects, Product teams, delivery leads and engineers, the Tech Lead converts approved architecture and business priorities into practical engineering decisions, reusable patterns and production-ready solutions. The position has no formal people-management responsibilities, but mentors engineers, strengthens technical capability and leads by influence across teams.

Position in the Engineering Career Path

The role sits below the Engineering Manager and above Senior/Principal, Mid/Expert and Junior Engineer positions. The Engineering Manager retains formal people management, workforce and strategic accountability. The Tech Lead is the highest hands-on technical leadership role for the domain and operates through technical authority, coaching and influence rather than line management.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Direction

• Act as the primary technical point of reference for the domain, providing clear direction on solution design, engineering approach and implementation choices.
• Lead significant technical decisions within approved architecture, security, privacy, risk and delivery governance.
• Review complex designs and changes, challenge assumptions and document material technical decisions, trade-offs and consequences.
• Translate architecture principles and standards into practical guidance that teams can apply consistently.
• Identify cross-team technical risks, dependencies and constraints early, and coordinate resolution with the accountable roles.

Backend & .NET Technical Leadership

• Set technical direction for .NET backend services, APIs, integrations and supporting data-access components.
• Lead design of service boundaries, API contracts, domain logic, persistence, integration and error-handling approaches.
• Define practical standards for C#, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, dependency management, automated testing and code review.
• Guide resilient service design using appropriate timeout, retry, idempotency, caching, concurrency and messaging patterns.
• Ensure services include suitable authentication, authorization, secrets management, logging, metrics, tracing and operational diagnostics.
• Advise teams on modular monolith, service-oriented, event-driven or microservice approaches according to context and approved architecture.

Engineering Delivery & Production Readiness

• Provide hands-on support for difficult, cross-cutting or time-critical engineering challenges across multiple initiatives.
• Guide delivery from discovery and design through build, testing, deployment, operation and continuous improvement.
• Ensure non-functional requirements, including security, reliability, scalability, performance, maintainability and supportability, are addressed from the outset.
• Use technical reviews, code reviews and readiness checks to improve implementation quality without taking ownership away from project or product leads.
• Support incident investigation, root-cause analysis and durable remediation for material production issues.

Engineering Standards, Quality & Reuse

• Define, improve and promote domain engineering standards, reference patterns, reusable components and quality guardrails.
• Strengthen automated testing, CI/CD, observability, documentation and technical debt management practices.
• Encourage consistent peer review and evidence-based engineering decisions across teams.
• Promote reuse and controlled standardization while allowing justified exceptions where delivery context requires them.
• Partner with Architecture, Platform, Security, Privacy and Risk stakeholders to keep engineering practices aligned with enterprise requirements.

Mentoring & Technical Capability

• Mentor Senior, Mid-level and Junior Engineers through design reviews, pairing, coaching and constructive technical feedback.
• Build autonomy in delivery teams by explaining decision principles rather than becoming a permanent approval bottleneck.
• Facilitate knowledge transfer, technical demonstrations and communities of practice across the Digital Factory.
• Support the Engineering Manager with technical input for capability priorities, recruitment and development planning, without acting as line manager.
• Model pragmatic, inclusive and accountable technical leadership.

Stakeholder Collaboration & Continuous Improvement

• Explain complex technical topics, options and risks clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Balance delivery value, technical quality, sustainability, risk and cost when recommending an approach.
• Contribute technical input to domain roadmaps, modernization priorities and platform investment decisions.
• Evaluate relevant technologies and practices through controlled experimentation and evidence, avoiding unnecessary complexity.
• Use delivery feedback, incident learnings and engineering metrics to drive measurable improvement.

What Success in this Role Will Look Like

• .NET services and APIs are secure, scalable, maintainable, observable and ready for reliable production operation.
• Teams apply consistent patterns for API design, persistence, integration, testing, CI/CD and operational support.
• Complex backend dependencies, performance risks and production concerns are identified and addressed early.
• Technical decisions are documented, proportionate and aligned with approved architecture and governance.
• Backend engineers receive timely support and develop stronger design, implementation and troubleshooting capability.
• Service reliability, reuse, maintainability and technical debt management improve across initiatives.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or a related field.
• 9+ years of overall professional experience.
• Extensive hands-on experience designing, building and operating enterprise backend applications and APIs.
• Strong expertise in C#, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, SQL and automated testing.
• Strong understanding of API design, domain-driven design, integration patterns, distributed systems, CI/CD, observability, security and production operations.
• Experience with Azure application, storage, identity, messaging, secrets and monitoring services.
• Experience diagnosing application performance, reliability and production issues using logs, metrics, traces and profiling tools.
• Proven experience leading technical design, mentoring engineers and resolving complex delivery challenges without formal line-management authority.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management and technical decision-making skills.
• Fluency in English, both written and spoken, with the ability to communicate effectively in a professional environment.
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Preferred Experience

• Experience with .NET 8 or later, .NET Aspire, Testcontainers and modern integration-testing practices.
• Experience with Azure Web Apps, Azure SQL, Blob Storage, Service Bus, Key Vault and Application Insights.
• Experience with Kubernetes, containerized workloads, event-driven architecture and asynchronous messaging.
• Experience defining reusable backend standards, reference implementations and modernization roadmaps.
• Experience in a regulated, governance-driven or professional services environment.

What we offer you

At EY, we’ll develop you with future-focused skills and equip you with world-class experiences. We’ll empower you in a flexible environment, and fuel you and your extraordinary talents in a diverse and inclusive culture of globally connected teams. Learn more.

Are you ready to shape your future with confidence? Apply today.

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