About OpenSesame

OpenSesame's mission is to help develop the world's most productive and admired workforces. We do this by delivering a comprehensive catalog of eLearning courses from the world's top publishers. We add value to customers through their entire learning journey.

While it appears to most people that we just sell training courses (over 40,000 of them), what we really offer is the opportunity for companies to upgrade the skills of each of their employees.

We are at a pivotal time in our growth as we diversify the ways we drive revenue. We've expanded our product offering dramatically, and we have a growing network of partners developing into a vibrant channel. Our customer base has high satisfaction ratings, and there is room to grow our retention even more.

Learn more about us.

About the Job

We are seeking a Technical Leadin the United Kingdom to join our fully remote team and play a technical leadership role in evolving OpenSesame’s eLearning platform. You’ll work closely with teammates through Extreme Programming (XP) practices, including test-driven development (TDD), continuous deployment, and evolutionary design. Your work will help drive technical decisions, improve team processes, and strengthen engineering culture.

As a Technical Lead, you will work across the stack, contributing to both new feature development and improving the design and tests of existing code. Our team is working on a TypeScript, Node.js, and React stack, and you will play a key role in refactoring the existing system while leading new changes. Additionally, you will mentor engineers, foster collaboration, and contribute to a culture of quality, continuous learning, and shared ownership.

This role is both technical and collaborative—you’ll enhance team skills, mentor engineers, and act as a connector across engineering teams. You will lead by example in XP practices while supporting the development of a strong engineering culture within a leaderful, remote-first team.

Performance Objectives

In your first 90 Days:

Get fully integrated into the team’s workflow, develop a deep understanding of the product and architecture, and start contributing to collaborative development processes.

Team Integration & Shared Ownership: Build relationships with engineers across OpenSesame, learn team workflows, and contribute with a focus on collective ownership of outcomes.
Technical Contribution: Pair and mob with team members to understand existing systems and contribute in maintaining and developing new features. Apply test-driven development (TDD) and CI/CD to improve feedback loops and to deliver high quality and maintainable solutions.
Mentorship & Skill Development: Start mentoring engineers, providing technical guidance, and fostering a culture of continuous learning through XP practices. Advise engineering managers on how to take advantage of team members’ strengths and how to address their weaknesses.
Improve Team Processes: Engage fully in the team's agile ceremonies, retrospectives, and discussions. Help the team refine XP-based workflows, including improving test-driven development (TDD) and evolutionary design strategies.

Within 6 Months:

Take on more leadership in technical decision-making, guide the team’s development practices, and ensure quality in both code and process.

Drive Team Decisions: Play a key role in shaping the technical direction of the team, ensuring architectural decisions balance scalability, maintainability, and simplicity.
Lead by Example: Continue engaging in pair programming and mobbing to lead important initiatives while fostering strong collaboration across the organization.
Incremental Delivery & Vertical Slicing: Help the team break down complex work into vertical slices, ensuring incremental value delivery and fast feedback loops.
Mentorship & Team Growth: Develop team members’ ability to collectively own their work and an ability to work incrementally without your active involvement. Foster a culture of care around edge cases and quality work.
Build & Testing Process Improvements: Mentor team members in improving build processes to achieve zero-friction local development and continuous integration. Develop expertise in James Shore’s "Testing Without Mocks" pattern language and begin mentoring others in applying it.

By the end of your first year:

You will have established yourself as a trusted expert across the organization.

Promote Team Ownership: Foster a culture where each team member feels empowered to take initiative and contribute to the success of the team. Encourage shared responsibility for quality and maintainability.
Help Shape Team Strategy: Work with engineering leadership to define and implement long-term technical strategies that align with company goals. Lead initiatives that enhance the team’s ability to execute efficiently within the XP framework.
Enhance XP Practices Across Teams: Act as a technical connector, helping align best practices in test-driven development (TDD), continuous deployment, and evolutionary design across engineering teams.

Tech Stack

TypeScript / Node.js / React
Terraform
Docker
AWS

Details

Location: This role is based in the United Kingdom. We operate as a remote-first company and periodically host all-company meetings in person. All positions require up to 15 days of travel per year, with senior management and leadership teams requiring up to 35 days.

Performance Driven: We're looking for self-starters with a track record of delivering excellent results, and we're highly selective about who we hire. We don't focus on typical job requirements, instead, we're interested in specific examples from your past experiences.

Compensation: At OpenSesame, we offer a comprehensive benefits package to employees upon hire, including ISOs, health insurance and paid time off. We carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors, relying on market data to determine compensation and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience.

Equal Employment Opportunity: OpenSesame is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer that values and welcomes diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of various legally protected characteristics, including criminal history, and strive to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. We prioritize safety and security and may use your information accordingly, and you can contact us for assistance or accommodations during the job application process.

Pay Transparency: At OpenSesame, we prioritize pay transparency, fairness, and equity to create a positive and inclusive work environment, regularly reviewing our compensation practices to align with our values and goals. We provide competitive and fair compensation to our employees based on their skills, experience, and performance.