Principal Developer Team Lead

Principal Developer Team Lead

Salary: £51,400 - £68,800

Location: Cambridge/Hybrid

Contract: Permanent

This Principal Developer Team Lead position offers a pivotal opportunity to shape the technical future of a world-renowned academic organisation. You'll spearhead the migration of enterprise systems to cutting-edge cloud-native AWS architectures, while balancing hands-on technical leadership with people management responsibilities.

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge. 

About the role

We're seeking a hands-on Principal Developer Team Lead to drive the technical transformation of our Exam Technology Organisation as we migrate legacy enterprise applications to modern, cloud-native architectures on AWS.

You'll balance technical leadership with people management, leading a team of 4-8 developers while establishing the foundations for our future technology stack. Your initial focus will be on two strategic priorities:

1. Evolving our SRE function - Building the DevOps infrastructure, automation, and tooling that enables Site Reliability Engineering practices across development and operations teams
2. Advancing our AI development practice - Establishing standards, frameworks, and best practices for responsibly integrating AI capabilities into our education platforms.

What You'll Do

Technical Leadership

• Lead migration of legacy applications to cloud-native AWS architectures
• Build DevOps automation to support SRE practices
• Establish AI/ML development standards and frameworks
• Set observability, monitoring, and incident response standards
• Promote best practices in web, event-driven, and cloud-native technologies
• Provide technical expertise and oversee code reviews

People Leadership

• Manage and mentor a team of 4–8 developers, providing coaching, development plan
• Identifying training needs in AI/ML and SRE.
• Support recruitment and foster a culture of continual improvement and wellbeing.

Delivery & Collaboration

• Deliver software in agile squads
• Collaborate with architects, SREs, product owners, and infrastructure teams
• Liaise with stakeholders to identify education sector needs
• Plan and estimate migrations and feature delivery
• Coordinate with service management, security, and AWS experts

About you

Essential experience

• Degree or equivalent
• Proven technical team leadership
• Skilled in two or more modern programming languages
• Experience with AWS cloud and infrastructure
• DevOps skills: automation, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code
• Understanding of SRE and observability
• Experience in web-apps and modern frameworks
• Strong communicator with technical and non-technical audiences

Technical Expertise

• CI/CD pipelines, automation frameworks, and developer tooling
• Observability tools, monitoring, logging, and alerting systems
• Responsible AI practices and governance
• Event-driven architecture and microservices patterns
• Software design patterns and scalability best practices
• Security principles in cloud environments

Leadership Qualities

• Ability to set technical standards and provide thought leadership
• Experience balancing people management with hands-on contribution
• Strong mentoring and coaching skills
• Collaborative approach that builds trust across teams
• Passion for continuous learning in AI/ML and DevOps
• Promotes inclusion and continuous improvement

You'll be instrumental in our digital transformation, establishing the foundations for reliable, innovative systems that serve millions of learners, teachers, and researchers worldwide. By evolving our SRE function and advancing our AI practice, you'll empower teams to deliver high-performance solutions while responsibly harnessing cutting-edge technologies.

If you would like to know more about this opportunity and what will make you successful, please see the full job description attached to the bottom of this vacancy on our careers site.

Rewards and benefits

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package, featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

We are a hybrid working organisation, and we offer a range of flexible working options from day one. We expect most hybrid-working colleagues to spend 40-60% of their time at their dedicated office or location. We will also consider other work arrangements if you wish to work more flexibly or require adjustments due to a disability.

Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We review applications on an ongoing basis, with a closing date for all applications being 18 February  2026.

If you are shortlisted and progressed through the stages, you can expect:   

• A 40-minute screening call with the Hiring Manager. 
• First stage interview via MS Teams or in person. You will be provided with a brief to complete a role related task which will need to be returned by email in advance of your interview. 

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov.uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You'll belong to a collaborative team that's exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe – for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it's safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.