Squad Technical Lead

Job Description

At Aberdeen, our ambition is to be the UK’s leading Wealth & Investments group.

Strengthening talent and culture is one of our strategic priorities. We strive to make Aberdeen a great place to work so that we can attract and retain the industry’s best talent.

Our people put our stakeholders at the heart of everything they do by helping us to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients, customers, colleagues, shareholders, and society.

We are focused on growing our direct and advised wealth platforms and repositioning our specialist asset management business to meet client demand. We are committed to providing excellent client service, supported by leading technology and talent.

Aberdeen comprises three businesses, interactive investor (ii), Investments, and Adviser, each of which focuses on meeting and adapting to our clients’ evolving needs:

• Interactive investor, the UK’s second largest direct-to-consumer investment platform, enables individuals in the UK to plan, save, and invest in the way that works for them.

• Our Adviser business provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to create value for their customers.

• Our Investments business is a specialist asset manager that focuses on areas where we have both strength and scale to capitalise on the key themes shaping the market, through either public markets or alternative asset classes.

As we embed a product model, we are creating several new roles to support the continual development and maturity of our new model and support our colleagues as they undertake this transition and within our teams. One of these critical roles is the Squad Technical Lead. The Squad Technical Lead will oversee all the technical aspects of squad delivery. They will take responsibility for the day-to-day task management of the squad, working with the support of a scrum master and under the direction of the product owner to ensure delivery of prioritised backlog items, ensuring a proper balance between business led features and support and maintenance. They will ensure all processes, policies and procedures are properly followed.  The Squad Technical Lead is also responsible for ensuring proper documentation and knowledge management processes are in place around the squad product set.  

As a Technical Lead you will:

• Work in partnership with the Product Owner to ensure the squad is always focussed on the right outcomes, ensuring technical considerations are accounted for

• Work with the product owner to ensure that key stakeholders are aware of progress and continued value of delivery of squad.

• Provide Subject Matter Expertise within your product set and use that knowledge to input productively to planning, estimation & skill development across the squad

• Oversee all technical aspects of the squad

• Own the solution design for the products you are responsible for.

• Connect & align cross squad/tribe/teams on technical matters and the architectural CoE on architectural roadmap 

• Understand the product backlog, managing technical implications/dependencies

• Track the progress of the squad

• Sign off all design decisions around squad deliverables and assure that decisions adhere to broad product roadmap and architectural standards.

• Ensure quality of what is released into production

• Remove technical blockers, and guide team around troubleshooting

• Identify, address, and mitigate potential risks and issues related to delivery.

• Drive continuous improvement across the SDLC working closely with the DevSecOps Platform Team

Within the product model, and within our tribes and squads, we require a mix of both technology skills and experience and business knowledge

Business Knowledge (beneficial but not a pre-requisite):

• Demonstrates an understanding of the asset management business, and particularly the core skills and experience that are required in order to enable timely delivery of products and services.

• Demonstrates an understanding of the broad business objectives of the Asset Management Tribe and specifically the core business objectives of the squad that you are part of

• Experience delivering complex software solutions for financial services

• Strong knowledge and experience of software design and development in a test-driven environment

• Familiar with software development tooling (particularly the Microsoft stack):

  • Azure DevOps as a work management system

  • Git, particularly branching, pull requests, and good practices

  • Awareness of mechanisms to automate: CI/CD, workflows, hooks

• You will have experience that demonstrates the ability to lead, motivate, and line manage a team of technology professionals.

• Proven experience in coaching, mentoring, and supporting the professional development of team members.

• You will be curious, staying abreast of emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practice

• Demonstrate a strong commitment to driving continuous improvement

• Expertise of the specific applications and technologies which your squad support.

• Familiar with, awareness of, or willing to learn additional technologies utilised within the squad and tribe.

• Excellent interpersonal skills

• Excellent communication skills

• Excellent organizational and time management skills

• Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to lead and influence as appropriate

• Ability to independently prioritise and carry out work as part of a team

• Attention to detail

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs. You can find out more about what we do here.

Whatever way you like to work, if you have the talent and commitment to join our team, we’d like to hear from you.

At Aberdeen we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach. This approach combines the benefits of face-to-face collaboration, coaching and connecting in our offices with the flexibility of working from home. It enables colleagues to find a balance that works for their roles, their teams, our clients and our business.

An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do. If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements – for example, because you are neurodivergent, or have a physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, visible or invisible disability – please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.