Engineering Lead
About the job
- Strong recent experience with modern web stacks, including TypeScript, React, Node, and Python.
- Daily use of agentic coding tools such as Claude Code or similar, with a track record of improving others’ AI-assisted practice.
- Proven team leadership as a tech lead, lead engineer, or manager of a small team, including architectural ownership and mentoring.
- Ability to participate in product discovery, negotiate scope with product peers, and propose alternatives.
- Line management experience or clear readiness for it with support.
- Excellent written and spoken English.
- Run one product squad building the compliance suite.
- Code regularly alongside the squad and set the quality bar through personal contributions and code review.
- Own the architecture of the squad’s applications and services, including long-term codebase health and safe operability after launch.
- Act as the squad’s Tech Lead under the Product Operating Model, participate in weekly discovery as a peer, and provide feasibility sign-off on product briefs before work enters the sprint board.
- Ship tested working code to main every sprint and launch on the termly cadence.
- Join customer conversations often enough to stay in direct contact with the problem.
- Line-manage the squad through regular one-to-one meetings, development plans, and performance conversations.
- Build an engaged, sustainable squad culture as part of the engineering leadership group.
- Use agentic-first working as the default and drive adoption across the squad.
- Contribute to shared agentic practice across the engineering organisation, including skills, tooling, and codebase AI health.
- Coordinate with other squad leads, the Staff Engineer, and the Platform and Core squads on shared services and dependencies.
- Consume shared AI services rather than rebuilding them, and flag cross-squad constraints early.
- Experience building LLM-powered product features.
- Experience in SaaS, EdTech, or compliance.
- Comfort working at a small-company pace with legacy code alongside greenfield work.
About the company
The Key Group provides subscription-based education software, data, and services for UK schools and trusts. Its offerings include The Key Leaders—an extensive library of leadership articles, templates, model policies, and curated news—and cloud-native MIS that replaces paper processes and supports governance and data management. It differentiates itself by combining a broad, always-updating information service with scalable MIS and a large network of clients built through acquisitions (Arbor, ScholarPack, RM Integris, RM Finance), reaching about a third of UK schools. Its goal is to support school improvement, reduce staff workload, ensure compliance, and provide timely, data-driven benchmarking and guidance across the UK education sector.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Founded
2007
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Arbor became England’s market leader in July 2025 with 38.6% share.
- The Key said Arbor now serves over half of English schools in 2026.
- Discontinuing legacy MIS brands funnels nearly all customers onto Arbor, raising cross-sell opportunities.
What critics are saying
- Bromcom is winning major contracts in Wales and Northern Ireland, compressing Arbor’s growth.
- Integris and ScholarPack shut in February 2026, forcing migrations and customer churn.
- ESS SIMS Next Gen finishes late 2026, restoring a full cloud rival.
What makes The Key Support Services unique
- Arbor, ScholarPack, and Integris consolidate data for over half of English schools.
- The Key Group pairs MIS software with leadership content, HR, finance, and timetabling.
- 2026 launches of SAMpeople, Robin, Habitude, and TimeTabler deepen workflow lock-in.
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Benefits
- Flexible Work Hours
- Parental Leave
- Paid Holidays