Technical Lead (Mobile Apps)

Location: Remote

Salary: £80,000 - £85,000

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. 

We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Where data guides progress without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded why they got into education every day. 

Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 7,000 schools and trusts. Giving time and power back to staff, turning data into clear, actionable insights, and supporting happier working days. 

At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education everyday: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn. 

We are looking for an experienced and collaborative Technical Lead (Mobile Apps) to join our Engineering team and help us define the technical vision, architecture, and standards that will shape our mobile app development for years to come. The remit and focus of the role is to mentor and coach engineers, embed a culture of quality, and help the team make sound technical decisions that deliver real value to customers. Working closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and other disciplines, this role provides the technical leadership and judgement needed to guide delivery and support the long-term growth of both people and technology. It’s a broad and exciting role, so we’re looking for someone up for a challenge - if you’re highly technical and an effective communicator, this is the role for you.

Core responsibilities

• Design, build, and own mobile application architecture, selecting appropriate libraries and tools to ensure our products are robust, scalable, and secure.
• Lead by example by writing clean, high-quality, and well-tested React Native code.
• Establish and document coding standards, and incorporate the organisation’s automated testing frameworks to enable a quality-first culture.
• Work closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, QA, Designers, and other Engineers and Tech Leads to align technical direction with product strategy and the organisation’s API strategy.
• Work actively with the architecture community (ATLAS) to define processes, drive technology adoption, and share best practices across teams.
• Play a role in hiring, onboarding, and mentoring, where required.
• Ensure non-functional requirements like performance, reliability, and security are addressed in all solution designs.
• Champion accountability by ensuring systems are observable and meet agreed Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Lead Root Cause Analysis when issues occur.
• Lead estimation and feasibility assessments, making sure plans are realistic and aligned with team skills and capacity.
• Establish a proactive strategy for managing technical debt from the outset to ensure long-term product health and maintainability.
• Contribute to structured release planning, ensuring phased rollouts deliver value early (MVP-first), and support post-release reviews.

• Significant professional experience building, shipping, and maintaining complex mobile applications using React Native.
• Experience with enterprise-scale or high-availability app and systems.
• Proven experience taking a mobile application from initial concept through to a successful launch on the App Store and/or Google Play.
• Strong grounding in engineering principles and design patterns (e.g. SOLID, DRY).
• Deep experience designing, consuming, and collaborating on RESTful APIs, with a strong understanding of mobile-centric API requirements.
• Working knowledge of AWS, including services relevant to mobile application backends.
• Familiarity with observability practices (monitoring, metrics, alerting) and Root Cause Analysis.
• Understanding of secure coding and compliance requirements.
• Experience with mentoring engineers, and a passion for fostering a collaborative, high-performing team culture.
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Agile facilitation (Scrum/Kanban) and continuous improvement.

Bonus skills

• Native mobile development experience (Swift/Kotlin) for building bridges or performance-critical components.
• Hands-on experience setting up CI/CD pipelines for React Native applications (e.g., using tools like Fastlane, Bitrise, or GitHub Actions).
• Knowledge of the PHP ecosystem, to better facilitate backend collaboration.

The chance to work alongside a team of hard-working, passionate people in a role where you’ll see the impact of your work everyday. We also offer:

• A dedicated wellbeing team who champion initiatives such as mindfulness, lunch n learns, manager training, mental health first aid training and much more!
• 32 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays). This is made up of 25 days annual leave plus 7 extra company wide days given over Easter, Summer & Christmas
• Life Assurance paid out at 3x annual salary
• Comprehensive wellness benefit provided by AIG Smart Health, which provides a 24/7 virtual GP service, Mental health support, Counselling, and personalised Health Checks 
• Private Dental Insurance with Bupa 
• Salary sacrifice Pension provided by Scottish Widows
• Enhanced maternity and adoption leave (20 weeks full pay) and paternity (6 weeks full pay) pay
• 5 free return to work maternity coaching sessions, helping you adapt to this new exciting time of life!
• Access to services such as Calm and Bippit (financial wellbeing coaching) 
• All of our roles champion flexible working and we are happy to discuss what this means to you
• Social committees that plan team, office and company wide events to bring people together and celebrate success
• Dedicated professional development training budget (CPD courses, upskilling resources, professional memberships etc)
• Volunteer with a charity of your choice for a day each year

1. Phone screen
2. 1st stage interview
3. 2nd stage with presentation

We are committed to a fair and comfortable recruitment process, so if you require any reasonable adjustments during your application or interview process, please reach out to a member of the team at [email protected].

Our commitment is also backed by our partnership with Neurodiversity Consultancy, Lexxic who provide us with training, support and advice. 

Our goal is for Arbor to be a workplace which represents, celebrates and supports people from all backgrounds, and which gives them the tools they need to thrive - whatever their ambitions may be so we support and promote diversity and equality, and actively  encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. 

Know someone else who would be good for this role? You can refer a friend, family member or colleague, if they are offered a role with Arbor, we will say thank you with a voucher valued up to £200! Simply email: [email protected] 

Please note: We are unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.