Software Tech Lead

Wiltshire | Hybrid - 3-4 days onsite | Up to £120,000 + benefits

Not just another Software Tech Lead.

We’re looking for a Software Tech Lead who wants genuine ownership someone who can take a complex problem, shape the solution, and stay close enough to the code to build it.

You’ll join a long-term UK defence programme where some of the most interesting technical challenges are still being worked out. Also be influencing architecture, lead technical decisions and mentor other engineers, while remaining hands-on day to day.

Where you'll make an impact…

• Own significant technical work from initial idea through to production.
• Design and build backend services, APIs and integrations across complex systems and data platforms.
• Work primarily with Java and SQL, with exposure to Angular or another modern frontend framework.
• Make pragmatic decisions around architecture, data, APIs and event-driven approaches.
• Raise engineering standards across testing, CI/CD, code quality and observability.
• Lead technical discussions and mentor engineers, helping develop the wider engineering capability.
• Work directly with technical and non-technical stakeholders to turn ambiguous requirements into practical solutions.

The kind of lead we're looking for…

You’ll be an experienced Senior Engineer, Tech Lead, Staff Engineer or equivalent with a strong backend/integration background and the confidence to influence technical direction.

You should have strong experience with:

• Java and SQL
• Backend services and API development
• System integration and software architecture
• Automated testing and CI/CD
• Working across the stack, ideally with Angular or a similar framework
• Technical leadership and mentoring

Most importantly, you’re comfortable when there isn't a perfect specification waiting for you. You can define the problem, challenge assumptions and make sound technical decisions.

We want to hear what you've actually changed.

Be ready to describe and quantify examples of your impact whether that's improving performance, reducing deployment times, increasing reliability, scaling a platform or developing other engineers.

Existing SC clearance is desirable. If you don't currently hold SC, you must be eligible to obtain it.

If you're looking for a role where you're still writing code but have a genuine say in how the technology is built, we'd like to hear from you.

Engineering Manager | Defence

Wiltshire | Hybrid – 3/4 days onsite | Up to £130,000 + benefits 

We’re working with a growing technology organisation delivering complex software solutions into the UK defence sector, and they’re looking for an Engineering Manager to build and lead a new engineering team supporting a major, long-term programme.

This is a genuine build-and-lead opportunity. You’ll have significant influence over the people you hire, the engineering standards you establish and how the team delivers.

The challenge...

• Build a new engineering team from the ground up, including defining the team structure, hiring engineers and setting the standards for how the team operates.
• Own delivery across a major, long-term defence programme, balancing customer commitments with the development of a growing team.
• Establish strong engineering practices around architecture, code quality, reviews, delivery and operational standards.
• Develop engineers at all levels, taking ownership of performance, progression and technical growth.
• Work across teams and with senior stakeholders to solve complex technical and delivery challenges.
• Stay close to the technology, contributing to architecture and design decisions, reviewing code and getting hands-on when the situation requires it.
• Lead a technically complex environment centred around Java, PostgreSQL and Angular.
• Build strong relationships with customers and stakeholders across the programme.
• Travel internationally on a regular basis, with overseas travel forming a significant part of the role.

The experience that matters...

• Proven experience managing software engineers as direct reports, with genuine ownership of performance, development and progression.
• Experience hiring and building engineering teams, particularly where strong technical talent is difficult to find.
• A strong software engineering background, ideally with significant experience in Java.
• Good knowledge of PostgreSQL and Angular or comparable modern technologies.
• Strong technical judgement, with the ability to contribute to architecture, design and code reviews.
• A track record of delivering software against demanding customer or commercial commitments.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.
• A genuine interest in technology and the ability to remain technically credible while leading people.
• Comfortable with regular international travel.

Experience within defence, government or another highly regulated environment would be advantageous.

Existing SC clearance is desirable, however it is not essential. You must be eligible and willing to undergo UK security clearance.

This is an opportunity to join a technically ambitious organisation at an exciting stage of growth, with the chance to build a team from the ground up rather than inherit an established structure.

You’ll have real ownership over how the team is built, how it operates and how its engineers develop, while remaining close to the technology and working on a significant defence programme.

Principal Systems Engineer

Portsmouth | Hybrid | £80,000 | SC Clearance

Talent Locker are working with a growing consultancy supporting customers across the defence and other high-integrity sectors, who are looking to add an experienced Principal Systems Engineer to their team.

This is a senior, client facing role for someone who enjoys getting into complex engineering problems, providing technical direction and helping customers find practical solutions. You’ll be working across the systems engineering lifecycle, whilst also having the opportunity to shape technical capability, mentor others and contribute to the growth of the business.

What will you be doing?

You’ll take a leading role across major consulting projects, providing both technical expertise and leadership to ensure high quality outcomes for clients.

Your work could include:

• Leading systems engineering projects and providing technical direction to delivery teams.
• Developing and reviewing systems architectures, technical strategies, and roadmaps.
• Working across requirements engineering, systems analysis, MBSE, integration, verification, validation, and technical assurance.
• Working closely with customers to understand complex challenges and develop practical engineering solutions.
• Engaging with stakeholders across UK MOD, defence primes and government organisations.
• Providing technical input into bids and supporting the identification of new opportunities.
• Helping to develop systems engineering methodologies, frameworks and best practice.
• Mentoring and developing engineers and consultants across the wider team.

What are we looking for?

This role would suit an experienced Systems Engineer who is comfortable operating at a senior/technical leadership level and enjoys working directly with clients.

You’ll ideally have:

• Strong experience within systems engineering, ideally gained within defence, aerospace, security or another high-integrity environment.
• Experience leading technical projects, teams or workstreams.
• Strong understanding of areas such as requirements, architecture, systems analysis, MBSE, integration or technical assurance.
• Experience working with MOD, defence primes or government customers.
• The ability to take complex technical problems and turn them into practical solutions.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the confidence to engage with senior technical audiences.
• An interest in mentoring others and helping to develop technical capability.
• Commercial awareness and an interest in contributing to business development and bids.
• Familiarity with defence acquisition frameworks would be beneficial.

Security requirements

You'll need existing UK right to work and be willing to undergo baseline security checks and apply for SC clearance.

Interested?

Please apply with your CV or get in touch with Emma at Talent Locker for a confidential conversation about the role.

Technical Business Analyst – Dynamics 365 ERP

Contract | Outside IR35 | Initial 3 months | South West London | 2–3 days onsite
£500–500 per day

A retail business is replacing its legacy ERP with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management.

This is a retail brand and the implementation will be focused on keeping D365 as close to standard as possible. The business will adapt its processes to fit Dynamics 365 rather than heavily customising the platform.

Key responsibilities:

• Understand and map existing legacy ERP business processes
• Map current processes against standard D365 Finance & SCM functionality
• Identify where business processes need to change to fit D365
• Run workshops with users and document requirements and process changes
• Carry out fit-gap analysis and challenge unnecessary customisation
• Work closely with the D365 implementation partner
• Support data migration, testing and UAT

You’ll need previous Business Analyst experience on Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations / Finance & SCM implementations, with a strong understanding of standard D365 processes.

This is a hands-on role in a small team, suited to someone who can work directly with users and help move the business from legacy ways of working into standard Dynamics 365.

Data Analyst – Dynamics 365 ERP Migration, 
Contract | Outside IR35 | Initial 3 months | South West London | 2–3 days onsite
£400-500 per day 

A retail business is undertaking an ERP transformation, moving away from a legacy, unsupported AS400-based system and implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM

The immediate requirement is for an experienced Data Analyst to take ownership of the data migration workstream, understanding and extracting data from the existing AS400 environment and preparing it for migration into Dynamics 365 ERP.

You’ll be working with legacy datasets that will require investigation, cleansing and transformation rather than simply moving data from one platform to another.

Key responsibilities:

• Analyse and understand data held within the existing AS400 ERP environment
• Extract, cleanse, map and transform legacy data ready for Dynamics 365
• Use SQL and ETL techniques to manipulate and prepare large datasets
• Identify data quality issues, inconsistencies and gaps ahead of migration
• Work with business and technical stakeholders to define mapping and transformation requirements
• Support migration testing, reconciliation and validation to ensure data is complete and accurate
• Help establish repeatable migration processes ahead of the D365 implementation

You’ll need strong SQL and ETL/data transformation experience, ideally gained on ERP or large-scale systems migration programmes. Experience working with AS400/IBM i data would be particularly useful, alongside previous exposure to Dynamics 365 ERP migrations.

This is a hands-on migration role suited to someone comfortable getting into complex legacy data, understanding what it means and turning it into clean, structured data ready for a modern ERP platform.

Data Analyst– Labour Productivity / Hospitality

London | Hybrid – 2 days a week | Contract | £650-700pd Outside IR35

Not a generalist Data Analyst role.

I’m looking for a Data Analyst with proven labour optimisation experience to support a major workforce productivity programme within a large, multi-site business.

The two things I need to see:

• Proven labour optimisation experience – delivering measurable improvements across labour productivity, wage % to sales, sales per labour hour, scheduling or labour deployment.
• Strong Finance & Operations stakeholder management – able to turn analysis into actions and measurable commercial results.

What you’ll need:

• 5+ years’ analytics / data science experience in a multi-site environment – hospitality, retail, leisure or QSR preferred
• Advanced SQL and data warehouse experience – Snowflake / dbt advantageous
• Strong Excel financial modelling and understanding of P&L / labour costs
• Strong BI development – Power BI, Tableau, Looker or Omni
• Experience with rota, time & attendance and payroll data

The role

• Labour productivity & workforce analytics
• Labour modelling and demand-led scheduling
• Identifying and sizing productivity opportunities
• Working across Data, Finance and Operations

If you have the labour optimisation + analytics + stakeholder experience, I’d like to speak with you.

Apply now or message me directly for more details.

Senior Project Manager – Dynamics 365 FO / SCM, Contract Outside IR35, £650 per day, 6 moths initial contract

A senior project management role joining at an early stage of a major ERP transformation, moving from a legacy Dynamics AX environment to Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management and Commerce.

You will take ownership of the programme from the early stages, working across business and technology teams to shape the delivery plan, manage stakeholders, suppliers, risks, dependencies and governance through to implementation.

You will need extensive experience project managing Dynamics 365 Finance / Finance & Operations programmes, ideally including migrations from AX.

Experience across D365 SCM, Commerce, retail or broader ERP transformation would be highly beneficial.

This is a hands-on delivery role for someone comfortable coming into a programme early, bringing structure and driving it forward.

Outside IR35, 6 month initial contract, November start.

Delivery Manager – Dynamics 365 Business Central / ERP

Permanent | Remote | Salary c£90k+ Bens

Lead delivery. Lead people. Make a real impact.

We’re looking for an experienced D365 BC / Business Central Delivery Manager to take ownership of the day-to-day delivery function within a growing D365 BC Consultancy business.

This is a genuine operational leadership role where you’ll directly manage 4 Team Leaders across Project Management, Retail, Technology and Business Central Consulting, while having wider responsibility for a delivery team of 20+ people.

You’ll sit closely alongside senior leadership, ensuring teams are performing, projects are healthy, customers are happy and issues are resolved quickly.

What will you be doing?

You’ll provide leadership across the delivery function, working closely with Team Leaders, Project Managers, consultants, developers and senior leadership.

You’ll:

• Directly manage and support 4 Team Leaders across PM, Retail, Technology and Business Central
• Provide wider operational leadership across a 20+ person delivery function
• Monitor project health, workloads, utilisation, resource and delivery risks
• Ensure teams have the right people and skills in place to deliver customer projects
• Identify and resolve blockers before they impact customers or deadlines
• Act as the first point of escalation for delivery and customer issues
• Support Team Leaders with performance, development and challenging situations
• Work closely with Project Managers to maintain delivery continuity and project health
• Review delivery quality, documentation and processes to ensure consistent standards
• Support resource planning and capacity management across multiple projects
• Provide senior leadership with clear visibility of delivery performance, risks and opportunities
• Support scope changes and change control, ensuring commercial impact is understood
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, quality and customer satisfaction
• Help implement new processes and ways of working across the delivery function

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for an experienced delivery professional who understands D365BC / Dynamics BC ERP Consultancy and knows how to lead people, customers and complex delivery environments.

You’ll ideally have:

• In depth experience in project or service delivery at Team Lead, Senior PM or Manager level
• Experience managing people, ideally Team Leaders or multiple delivery disciplines
• Hands-on experience delivering ERP projects, ideally Microsoft Dynamics Business Central / D365BC 
• Experience overseeing multiple projects, workstreams or customers
• Strong customer-facing experience across discovery, UAT, go-live and post-go-live
• Experience handling escalations and resolving complex delivery issues
• Strong stakeholder and people management skills
• Experience working across PM, development, architecture, consulting and support functions
• A strong understanding of resource planning, utilisation and delivery risk
• Commercial awareness, including scope changes and project financials
• The confidence to make decisions, challenge when necessary and bring solutions not just problems
• Experience within a consultancy, professional services or fast-paced delivery environment

Knowledge of Agile, ITIL, PRINCE2 or other delivery frameworks would also be beneficial.

Why this role?

This isn't simply a project management position.

You'll have real ownership of the delivery operation, directly leading 4 Team Leaders and influencing a wider team of 20+ people.

You'll work closely with senior leadership to improve the way projects are delivered, develop your teams, solve customer challenges and ultimately improve delivery quality, efficiency and profitability.

If you're an experienced D365 BC Delivery Manager, Senior Project / Programme Manager, Service Delivery Manager or ERP Delivery Lead ready for a role with genuine operational influence, we'd love to hear from you.

D365 BC / Business Central Consultant - Manufacturing

Permanent | Remote | Salary c£90k + benefits 

D365BC / Business Central + Manufacturing. That's the combination we're looking for.

If you’re a Dynamics 365 BC / Business Central Consultant who understands both the technology and how a manufacturing business actually operates, this could be a great next move.

We’re working with a growing technology consultancy that is looking for an experienced Business Central Consultant with strong manufacturing expertise to join their team and deliver impactful D365BC projects for a range of clients.

This isn't simply a role where you'll configure a system and move on. You'll be working directly with clients, understanding their challenges, shaping solutions and helping transform the way they operate.

What you'll be doing

• Deliver and support end-to-end Dynamics 365 / BC Business Central implementations.
• Take ownership of the manufacturing side of projects, including production orders, BOMs, routings, MRP/MPS, capacity planning and shop-floor processes.
• Understand how clients currently work and identify where Business Central can improve, automate or streamline their processes.
• Lead client workshops, provide consultancy and act as a trusted D365BC Business Central advisor.
• Translate business requirements into functional specifications for developers.
• Work closely with developers, BAs and Project Managers to deliver successful implementations.
• Support testing, quality assurance and go-live activities.
• Deliver training and create documentation to ensure clients get the most from their new system.
• Share your knowledge with and support more junior consultants.

What makes someone successful in this role?

We're looking for someone who has:

• Strong D365BC / Dynamics 365 Business Central consulting and implementation experience.
• Solid manufacturing ERP experience, this is key.
• Hands-on knowledge of BOMs, routings, production orders, MRP/MPS, capacity planning, inventory and warehousing.
• A good understanding of the wider D365BC Business Central platform.
• Experience working directly with clients and senior stakeholders.
• The ability to take a business problem and turn it into a practical D365BC / Business Central solution.
• Excellent communication skills and the confidence to run workshops and explain solutions to non-technical users.
• Experience working on complex D365 Business Central projects.

Aptean experience? Even better, but it's not essential.

Why this opportunity?

You'll be joining a forward-thinking Consultancy where you'll have the opportunity to work on varied D365BC Business Central projects, develop your consulting career and work with the latest Microsoft technologies.

You'll also have access to Microsoft certification and professional development, alongside a strong benefits package including pension from day one, birthday leave, EV salary sacrifice, employee support programmes and more.

Security Engineer – MOD / Defence / High Security Clearance

Farnborough | Hybrid 3 days p/week on site
£75-80k + bonus and benefits
High-level UK Security Clearance required

Are you a Security Engineer with experience across privileged access management, identity security or enterprise security tooling?

This is a hands-on security engineering role working within a highly secure Defence and National Security environment. You’ll maintain and improve security platforms controlling privileged access, credentials and administrative activity across critical infrastructure.

There is also a requirement within the team for Elastic SIEM capability, so if you have strong Elastic experience alongside your security engineering background, that would also be relevant.

The role

You’ll work across identity, privileged access and wider security infrastructure, including:

• Managing passwords, SSH keys, API keys and privileged credentials.
• Configuring and troubleshooting automated password and credential rotation.
• Running discovery scans across Active Directory and network environments.
• Managing RBAC, permissions and user/group access.
• Monitoring privileged sessions and investigating failed authentication activity.
• Maintaining, patching and upgrading security platforms.
• Reviewing audit logs and integrating security events with SIEM tooling.
• Troubleshooting firewalls, load balancers and connectivity issues.

Key experience

• Hands-on Security Engineering within complex environments.
• Privileged Access Management (PAM) or identity security solutions.
• Active Directory, identity providers, privileged and service accounts.
• Vulnerability scanning, EDR or SIEM tooling.
• Elastic SIEM experience would be a strong advantage.
• Understanding of RBAC, credential management and security monitoring.

Experience with DevSecOps, CI/CD, ATT&CK or MOD security environments would also be useful.

There is a great corporate benefits package.

If your background is in PAM, identity security, Elastic SIEM or hands-on security engineering, this is an opportunity to work on complex systems where security has a direct operational impact.