Senior/Lead Software Engineer (Technical Lead Manager)

About the role

Open Government Products (OGP) is hiring a Senior/Lead Software Engineer to lead 1-2 engineers in its Applied Experiments Division (AED) as a Technical Lead Manager. The team sits in the AI Native group and builds shared AI tooling for product teams, working with product teams and the central tooling team. The role does not own one long-lived product: instead it runs a portfolio of experiments, starting new ones, running several in parallel and handing them over, merging or winding them down once they have answered the questions they set out to test.

Key responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the team's experiments, including architecture and engineering standards that balance speed with reliability.
• Take on the hardest or riskiest parts of an experiment personally, review the team's work and keep live experiments safe, reliable and observable.
• Hire, onboard and coach engineers, with clear expectations, regular feedback and fair performance and career conversations.
• Work with product managers, designers and policy officers to define experiments, set success and stop criteria and focus engineering effort where it adds value.
• Help the team learn from each experiment, recommend next steps and manage handovers or wind-downs responsibly.
• Communicate technical options, risks and trade-offs to partners and leadership, and share good practices across AED.

Required profile

• Strong, hands-on engineering across the stack, with experience building and running production systems.
• Technical leadership: leading technical direction, making architecture and standards decisions and taking responsibility for outcomes.
• People leadership: coaching and growing engineers and being involved in hiring; formal management experience is welcome but not required.
• Ownership and initiative in ambiguity, and collaboration with PMs, designers and policy officers.
• Experience using AI in software delivery, understanding its limits and setting guardrails for quality.
• A genuine drive to do public good.
• Years of experience or a management title, a degree or specific stack are not required.

What we offer

• Autonomy to voice opinions and suggest future directions.
• Rapid prototyping and a flexible work arrangement.
• Dedicated yearly learning months and hackathons.