Principal Tech Team Lead (Front End)
- London, United Kingdom
Posted 3 days ago
About the role
About us
At Xelix, we work with some of the world’s largest companies to automate and strengthen their financial controls. Our AI solutions redefine how Accounts Payable teams operate – moving from manual processes to automated, intelligent workflows.
Xelix is a fast-paced scale-up – things move fast and expectations are high. We raised our Series B with Insight Partners in June 2025 and are expanding aggressively. We have a team of 150 talented people pulling together to achieve our goals. Everyone is trusted to take ownership, move fast and have a meaningful impact. We prioritise personal and professional growth, keep things fun, and love to celebrate a milestone together.
In this role you’ll grow, be challenged and help shape the future of Xelix. If you’re excited about building something special with us, we’d love to hear from you.
About the role
Principals can act as technical stewards, ensuring consistency across squads and enforcing architectural guidelines. They should guide and coach, not act as another command-and-control layer.
Reports to: VP of Engineering
Direct reports: 3–5 Frontend Tech Team Leads
As a Principal Team Lead (Front End), you will play a critical role in scaling our engineering organisation. You’ll lead and mentor a group of Tech Team Leads, ensuring technical alignment across teams and driving best practices for frontend architecture, accessibility, reliability, and performance.
This is a hybrid role that combines technical leadership, organisational strategy, and people management. You’ll work closely with the VP of Engineering and Staff Engineers to shape our technical vision, enforce architectural standards, and develop future leaders in the organisation.
You will set direction for our frontend platform and user experience, with a strong emphasis on React and modern frontend technologies, ensuring we can move quickly while maintaining a high bar for quality, consistency, and maintainability.
What you'll be doing
People Leadership
Manage and grow 3–5 Tech Team Leads, providing coaching on their leadership, delivery, and technical excellence.
Support career development plans and performance reviews for the Tech Team Leads and their direct reports.
Promote and exemplify the Xelix Culture Behaviours (Be Productive, Be Proactive, Keep Improving and Be Collaborative).
Assist with defining team structures, e.g. squad formation, and defining ways of working for teams.
Frontend Technical Strategy & Alignment
Define and maintain frontend architecture standards (React + TypeScript), ensuring consistency across squads.
Set conventions for component architecture, routing, state management, and data-fetching patterns.
Support the design system and shared component library direction, including governance and adoption.
Drive front end performance strategy and ensure teams have the tooling to measure and improve it.
Establish frontend observability best practices (error monitoring, user-impact visibility, and actionable dashboards).
Stay hands-on by reviewing key code, participating in design sessions, and providing technical guidance.
Contribute to the codebase (Approx 30% of your time)
Introduce tools and techniques to help the tech team go faster.
Delivery & Quality
Ensure your teams are delivering code every day.
Define and champion the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) process.
Act as a quality guardian through code reviews, incident management and developer training.
Promote the use of AI by the engineering team.
Cross-Team Leadership
Act as a trusted liaison between Senior Leadership and Tech Leads, balancing strategic priorities with team realities.
Facilitate collaboration across squads for shared services and platform initiatives.
What you’ll bring
Proven experience leading multiple teams or managers.
Experience building and scaling React applications (ideally with TypeScript).
Strong understanding of front end architecture and modern web fundamentals (performance, browser constraints, and build tooling).
Experience setting direction for testing strategy across the frontend (unit/component/e2e).
Excellent coaching and mentoring skills; ability to develop strong leaders.
Experience scaling engineering teams from 5 to 50 engineers is a plus.
Strong communication and influence skills, with a servant-leadership mindset.
What we offer in return
Competitive salary of £85,000-£125,000 depending on experience
️ 27 days of annual leave (including 3 days Christmas closing) which increases up to 3 days based on tenure, with the option to roll over, buy or sell up to 3 days
Hybrid working with one day a week from our dog-friendly Hoxton office
On-site gym and cycle to work scheme
️ Employee discount at over 100 retailers
Comprehensive private medical & dental cover with Vitality
Enhanced parental leave pay
Learning & development culture – £1,000 personal annual budget
We’re carbon-neutral and are working towards ambitious carbon reduction goals
Lots of team socials & activities
️ Annual team retreat
Want to learn more?
About us
Xelix blog
Xelix news
Xelix glassdoor
We believe that people from diverse backgrounds, with different identities and experiences make our company and product better. No matter your background, we'd love to hear from you! And if you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you - we're happy to accommodate!
If you're a recruiting agency - we have an existing list of agencies we work with and we are not currently planning on expanding the list. Neither the Talent team nor hiring managers or the Support team will respond to cold outreach.
This is a full-time position, with standard working hours from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
Interview Process
While the exact process may vary slightly depending on the role, our typical interview stages are:
Introductory Call – A short Teams conversation with a Talent Partner to discuss your background and the opportunity.
Hiring Manager Interview – A 30–45 minute Teams meeting to explore your experience and fit for the team.
Technical Task or Presentation – A role-relevant exercise to demonstrate your skills and approach.
Final On-site Interview – An in-person meeting with our senior leadership team and co-founders at our office.
We strive to make the process clear, efficient, and respectful of your time.
We welcome the responsible use of AI for research and interview preparation, but ask that it isn't used to generate answers during live interviews. We also believe in being transparent - we use Metaview's AI note-taker during interviews so our interviewers can stay fully present. If you'd prefer us not to use it, just let your interviewer know. While you may need to answer eligibility questions as part of your application, we do not use AI to review or make decisions on applications - every application is reviewed fairly by a member of our Talent team.