Engineering Lead (Staff)

We're putting together a talented team to build the #1 training platform for Runners

We help everyday runners become outstanding by providing world-class training, coaching and community for everyone, whether you're improving your 5k time or training for your first marathon. To date we have built iOS, Android and Apple watch apps that help people achieve their goals by coaching them through the full journey and syncing to their favourite fitness devices.

We’re growing extremely fast! In November 2023 we closed a $6.5M funding round led by JamJar with participation from Eka Ventures, Venrex and Creator Ventures. In 2024 , we were selected by Apple as one of three global finalists for the 2024 iPhone App of the Year , reflecting the innovation and impact of what we’ve built & now in 2025 we have ****just been acquired by Strava ! 🤯 🎉

We want to grow as fast as we can into the future and are looking for individuals who will help us get there. Our aim is to reach millions of subscribers and be the go-to training platform for any runner. Now is a magical time to join and with our recent acquisition it makes the journey even more exciting! 🚀

What You’ll Be Doing:

We’re looking for an Engineering Lead to play a pivotal role in driving the technical success of our App Team at Runna. This is a hands-on leadership role where you’ll work across multiple cross-functional product teams, providing architectural direction, ensuring engineering excellence, and enabling the successful delivery of features across our iOS (React-Native), Android (React-Native), and Apple Watch apps, as well as third-party integrations (Garmin, Strava, Coros, Fitbit, Suunto, etc).

You’ll partner closely with our CTO and founders, as well as product and design leads, to align technical strategy with company goals. You’ll be a multiplier for the engineering team—mentoring developers, improving processes, and guiding the evolution of our systems as we scale. We’re looking for someone who is not only technically excellent, but also a creative problem solver and collaborative leader who brings energy and clarity to fast-paced environments.

• Lead the architectural design and technical strategy across multiple product teams, ensuring scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions.
• Drive the end-to-end delivery of key initiatives, working hands-on to build, test, and ship features across the full stack (mobile, backend, integrations).
• Define and communicate cross-squad engineering strategy.
• Coach and support Tech Leads and engineers , providing guidance, mentorship, and code reviews without creating bottlenecks.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and Engineering Leads to define the best solutions for user experience, balancing speed, quality, and long-term technical goals.
• Connect squads and ensure smooth cross-team collaboration , driving quality, unblocking shared work, and resolving dependencies.
• Champion developer productivity by improving our CI/CD pipeline, tooling, and internal workflows to accelerate delivery and reduce friction.
• Own the release process and support a culture of reliable, continuous deployment—while enabling teams to ship confidently and independently.
• Track delivery across squads and ensure alignment with business goals.
• Maintain and grow a high-performing engineering culture based on ownership, knowledge-sharing, and continuous improvement.
• Contribute to code when it makes sense: unblocking teams, pairing for mentorship, prototyping, or driving quality through example.

Requirements

What You’ll Bring To The Team:

• 5+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with a focus on technical leadership/engineering management and driving projects end-to-end.
• Deep expertise in TypeScript/JavaScript , with a strong foundation across the full stack.
• Proven track record of leading the architecture and successful delivery of large-scale React-Native mobile applications in a production environment.
• Experience working in AWS cloud environments , with a strong preference for familiarity with serverless architectures (e.g. Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, AppSync).
• Skilled in defining and delivering features from initial architecture and design through to release, testing, and production support .
• Comfortable stepping outside your core expertise to solve problems across the stack, from frontend to cloud infrastructure.
• Able to thrive in a highly skilled, fast-paced engineering team . In 2024, we shipped:
• 99 mobile app releases (iOS and Android)
• 443 API releases
• 237 modelling backend releases
• Proven ability to mentor engineers, support team growth, and guide complex projects from design to release.
• Comfortable making strategic technical decisions while enabling others to lead implementation.
• A strong advocate for modern engineering practices, including:
• Iterative development , continuous deployment, and test automation
• Knowledge sharing , pair programming, and collaborative design & development
• Shared code ownership and cross-functional product team collaboration

Bonus Points If You:

• Have delivered impactful work across the full stack —from mobile to backend services and cloud infrastructure.
• Thrive in autonomous roles , taking ownership without heavy direction.
• Communicate proactively, surfacing risks early and keeping stakeholders aligned.
• Have hands-on experience with SwiftUI or native mobile development.
• Are confident working with and improving CI/CD pipelines , release cycles, and deployment processes.
• Have experience with React Native at scale in performance-sensitive or offline-first applications.
• Have deep experience with AWS services and serverless architecture patterns .
• Are comfortable with Infrastructure as Code tooling like Terraform, CDK, or CloudFormation.
• Have contributed to open-source communities—through code, issues, testing, or documentation.
• Have a personal interest in health, fitness, or sports technology .
• Embrace a fast-paced startup environment , adapting quickly to change.

Our Tech Stack:

Check out our Tech Radar here which we are constantly iterating, and below you can find a small reflection of our current tech stack:

Frontend:

• React Native (iOS and Android)
• Typescript
• GraphQL (Apollo Client)
• Fastlane
• SwiftUI (Apple Watch)
• Maestro E2E tests

Backend:

• Serverless (AWS)
• Lambdas (NodeJS & Python)
• AWS AppSync
• DynamoDB, S3, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, SageMaker
• Snowflake

All the other good stuff:

• Sentry
• GitHub Actions
• Intercom, Mixpanel
• RevenueCat
• App Store Connect / Play Store
• Google Tag Manager

Benefits

Salary and Benefits:

We offer a salary of £95,000-£120,000 per year depending on experience plus equity in the form of Runna stock options.

We’re also committed to continually evolving our benefits to support you as we grow. Here is a brief overview what we currently offer in the UK 🇬🇧

• 🏢 Flexible working – we typically spend 2–3 days a week together in our Vauxhall office
• 🏝️ 25 days holiday , plus bank holidays (which you can take whenever suits you)
• 📱Runna subscriptions for you and 5 of your friends (get ready to be your friends fave person or save them for xmas presents!)
• 🧡 Strava membership!
• 💸 Money every year to spend on gear, events and the gym!
• 🤑 We’ll give you a voucher to spend on our website so you can buy yourself new Runna kit (and will renew this every year on your work anniversary)
• 🏥 Private health insurance with Bupa and workplace pension scheme
• Modern Health ia a mental wellness platform and app that combines technology with professional support to improve mental well-being and reduce stress
• Carrot fertility support - this benefits provider can provide inclusive fertility, hormonal health, and family-forming benefits to our global employee population and takes the burden off what we know can be a stressful process.

Please see more info on our amazing benefits here: Benefits at Runna

Our Interview Process:

Our aim is to keep the interview process as straightforward and enjoyable as possible, and will consist of the following stages:

1. Getting to Know You + Live Coding (45-minute video call, first 25 mins will be an introductory chat followed by two live coding exercises from )
2. Take home technical task (max 1-2 hours to complete, or if you have something interesting you recently built and would like to showcase then that's perfectly OK)
3. 1.5-hour technical interview (the first half of the call will be used to discuss the take-home technical task from the previous stage and the second half will consist of system design and some general architecture/tech questions)
4. Meet the team (in-person chat with founder(s) and rest of the team)

Once the process is finished, we promise to let you know our decision as soon as possible.

How to Apply:

Please note, we are unable to accept any applications outside of Workable. I f you have any questions regarding the status of your application, please email [email protected]

Still have questions or want to know more? Check out our Careers Page ✨

🌎 We’re unfortunately unable to sponsor for this role