Practice Leads

Practice Lead

Location: UK or Portugal

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent

About Us

Everything we do is to empower our clients to move forward. Our purpose is to help our clients develop the capabilities they need to outperform their competitors. Our success is a consequence of ensuring our clients are successful. Our company is built on extraordinary people; we aim to attract, inspire, develop and retain them. YLD is a software engineering and design consultancy; we create digital capabilities for our clients that last beyond our engagement. We have offices in London, Lisbon, Porto.

About you

You have strong technical acumen with a genuine passion for people. You're looking to continue on a management or engineering leadership track—or take your first steps into leadership. You are passionate about engineering, but above all, you care about the human side of it. You understand that software delivery at scale requires processes, coordination, and documentation. You're excited about creating an environment of trust, curiosity, and collaboration while driving consistent, high-quality delivery across our projects.

About the Role

The Practice Lead is a new role for YLD as we scale our engineering practice. You'll play a pivotal role in shaping your vertical, nurturing your team's growth, and ensuring we deliver lasting impact for our clients. This is an engineering leadership role with a strong people focus—owning hiring, retention, and development within your team. You'll be part of a wider engineering leadership team building a culture where engineers thrive, clients feel supported, and knowledge flows freely across the organisation. This role is non-billable, allowing you to dedicate your focus to improving workflows, supporting team operations, and contributing to the long-term success of YLD's engineering organisation.

Your day-to-day responsibilities will look like this:

Development and Impact

• Act as a role model and trusted advisor—guiding and supporting your team through challenges, frustrations, and successes alike;
• Help team members set meaningful development and career goals, empowering them to grow both professionally and personally;
• Own skill development within your vertical and build comprehensive growth pathway frameworks, ensuring 100% of the team has a clear path for growth;
• Recommend relevant training, resources, and materials; manage training budget requests aligned with development and work goals;
• Lead impact and performance reviews across your team, making recommendations for growth, promotions, and salary calibrations;
• Manage mentor assignments within your team and coach Managers (YLD Mentors) in leading others effectively;
• Guide team members through probation, orientation, approve probation outcomes, and support the full employee lifecycle including off-boarding;
• Keep your team informed on company policies, requirements, and procedures;
• Foster a trusting environment through open, clear, and consistent communication;
• Address performance or conduct challenges early, working closely with Client Partners and the People Team;
• Coordinate bench support, engaging engineers in learning opportunities or internal projects during downtime.

Technical Delivery & Client Partnership

• Partner with Client Services to oversee all technical aspects of delivery, ensuring maximum client satisfaction and team happiness;
• Maintain strong, consistent delivery standards and quality across your team;
• Build and maintain relationships with client stakeholders to clearly understand and align expectations;
• Regularly check in with clients and teams to document technical decisions, value delivered, and learning insights;
• Collaborate with other Practice Leads to source technical expertise when needed;
• Bring thought leadership to projects, inspiring both clients and teams.

Recruitment & Onboarding

• Partner with the Talent team, Head of Engineering, and Client Services to plan and execute recruitment strategies—maximising the match between upcoming work and candidate profiles;
• Develop interview frameworks, workflows, exercises, role descriptions, and onboarding plans to attract and integrate top talent;
• Ensure alignment between interviewers on strategy and criteria;
• Track recruitment progress and ensure efficient scaling to meet business demands.

• Take a values-driven approach to leadership that builds psychological safety through open and clear communication;
• Build strong relationships within your vertical and across the wider team;
• Recognise warning signs of stress or ill health; create space for your team's wellbeing;
• Collaborate with Marketing to showcase impact through content, events, and meetups;
• Support sales processes as a technical guide for proposals and proofs-of-concept.

• Drive comprehensive documentation for best practices, technical guidelines, and project work;
• Own documentation of client and project work for marketing, sales, and institutional knowledge;
• Support the Head of Engineering on long-term strategic projects, including scaling teams and adopting new tools;
• Proactively identify opportunities to enhance team productivity and improve engineering workflows.

This role is for you if:

• You're energised by developing people and seeing their growth
• You excel at building relationships and creating psychological safety across teams and clients
• You combine strong technical judgment with business acumen and thought leadership abilities

This role is not for you if:

• You prefer hands-on technical work over people management.
• You're uncomfortable with client relationships and business development involvement;
• You're uncomfortable managing people expectations, discussing salaries and reviews;
• You don't enjoy documentation, process creation, and framework building.

Why join YLD?

• You’ll be part of a supportive, values-driven culture that puts people first.
• You’ll have the autonomy to shape how your team operates, with the backing of a highly collaborative leadership team.
• You’ll work on projects that genuinely make a difference — with clients ranging from scale-ups to global organisations.
• You’ll grow alongside a talented team who care deeply about the work they do.

Benefits you’ll receive:

• Company Private Health care
• Enhanced fully paid maternity and paternity leave for up to 6 months
• Company’s Pension Scheme (UK Only)
• 25 days annual holiday (excluding Public Holidays)
• £2000/€2000 annual allowance for Training/Conferences
• £300/€300 annual allowance for additional hardware
• Mental Health support: access to Oli app
• Meditation/Sleep support: Headspace or Calm app subscription
• Bonus (depending on Company performance and results)
• Company laptop
• Generous referral schemes