Technical Lead

About this role

ABOUT QUANTUMLOOPAI QuantumLoopAI is one of the UK's fastest-growing healthtech companies. Our AI-powered platform, EMMA, is used by hundreds of organisations across the UK to manage communications, automate workflows and deliver better outcomes through intelligent automation. Backed by leading investors and scaling rapidly ahead of our Series A, we are building the infrastructure that will define the next generation of AI-driven service delivery. ABOUT THE ROLE We are looking for a Technical Lead with 8+ years of experience in full-stack engineering (backend heavy) to lead architecture, development and technical strategy across our distributed systems and AI initiatives. You will work directly with the Co-Founder, translating product vision into technical execution, guiding a distributed engineering team, and driving the integration of cutting-edge AI capabilities — including LLM orchestration, voice agents, speech-to-text and text-to-speech pipelines — into a production platform that is scaling fast. This role requires someone who can operate at the intersection of engineering leadership and hands-on delivery. You will set the technical direction, define architecture, and actively build — while mentoring engineers, shaping culture and challenging decisions at the highest level. WHAT YOU WILL DO Technical Leadership and Architecture Lead design and implementation of scalable backend systems using Node.js, TypeScript and microservice architectures. Define and enforce coding standards, design principles and architecture guidelines across the engineering team. Ensure platform scalability, reliability and security through robust design and proactive system monitoring. Architect end-to-end AI-powered features from prototype to production, balancing speed with engineering rigour. AI/ML and Prompt Engineering Design, build and maintain AI/ML-powered systems including chatbots, voice agents, RAG pipelines and multi-agent architectures. Own prompt engineering practices across the platform — crafting, testing, versioning and optimising prompts for LLMs (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and open-source models). Implement evaluation frameworks to measure LLM output quality, hallucination rates, latency and cost. Integrate AI models into production environments and manage model lifecycle, versioning and observability. Leverage Azure Machine Learning, OpenAI APIs and multi-agentic frameworks (LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI) to build intelligent, data-driven experiences. Champion the use of modern AI development tooling (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude) across the engineering team. Voice AI: STT, TTS and Telephony Lead architecture and integration of Speech-to-Text (STT) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) pipelines for real-time voice AI applications. Evaluate and integrate providers such as Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Azure Speech and Whisper — balancing latency, accuracy, cost and voice quality. Build and optimise end-to-end voice agent flows: ASR to LLM to TTS with low-latency streaming and graceful fallback handling. Where applicable, integrate with telephony platforms such as Twilio, Vonage, LiveKit or SIP/PSTN-based systems — including call routing, IVR design and inbound/outbound call orchestration. Infrastructure and DevOps Own cloud infrastructure strategy on Azure — including AKS, App Services, Azure Functions, networking and cost governance. Architect for high availability, auto-scaling and fault tolerance. Define SLOs and drive reliability improvements. Manage CI/CD pipelines, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), secrets management and deployment automation. Maintain and optimise MySQL and cloud data services (CosmosDB, Firebase, Data Lake). Ensure query performance and cost efficiency at scale. Establish infrastructure-as-code practices (Terraform, Bicep or equivalent) and enforce security best practices. Implement robust observability: distributed tracing, structured logging, alerting and dashboards. Full Stack Engineering Drive backend development while ensuring smooth frontend integration using React, Next.js and modern UI frameworks. Deliver clean, maintainable, testable and well-documented code. Uphold high standards through code reviews. Team Leadership Work directly with the Co-Founder to translate product vision into a clear technical roadmap — providing candid perspectives and proactively flagging risks. Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders. Lead, mentor and upskill engineers across multiple teams. Conduct regular code reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions. Collaborate with PMs, BAs and designers to ensure technical feasibility, clear scope and timely delivery. Foster a culture of ownership, transparency and continuous improvement. Requirements ESSENTIAL 8+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong focus on backend systems and architecture. Proven expertise in Node.js, TypeScript, React, Next.js and MySQL. Experience designing and scaling distributed systems and microservices. Strong, hands-on understanding of AI/ML concepts including model integration, prompt engineering and LLM deployment in production environments. Practical experience with STT and TTS technologies (Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Azure Speech, Whisper or equivalent). Deep knowledge of cloud infrastructure — particularly Azure — including compute, networking, storage and cost management. Experience with Azure Cloud Services, Azure Machine Learning or equivalent cloud platforms (AWS/GCP). Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines, Docker, Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code. Expertise in building secure, scalable RESTful and GraphQL APIs. Excellent knowledge of authentication, authorisation and data security best practices. Outstanding communication skills: clear, direct and effective when working with both technical teams and co-founder-level stakeholders. Proven ability to lead technical teams, set engineering direction and mentor developers. Comfortable working remotely and aligning to UK busi