Hands-on Tech Lead, AI & Digital Commerce

Have you built impactful software across diverse operating environments, whether in corporate enterprises, high-growth scale-ups, or digital agencies, and do you know how to choose the right engineering practices for the challenge? Do you get as much energy from designing robust architecture as from shipping production-grade code yourself? And do you see AI as the single biggest opportunity to transform how modern businesses scale? If so, let's talk.

As a Hands-on Tech Lead, AI & Digital Commerce, you bridge high-level technical architecture and real-world, hands-on engineering. We empower you to take ownership of complex client transformations, drive technology strategy, and stay close to the code. In return, you get complete autonomy, zero bureaucracy, a transparent impact-driven culture, and a Nordic community of expert peers.

Join Columbia Road in Stockholm, and help our clients elevate their tech stack into a true competitive growth engine. If you're ready to create measurable business impact through tech leadership, this is where you belong.

Who we are

Columbia Road is the go-to consulting partner for businesses that want to sell better. We strive NOT to be your typical digital agency. Business results rarely come from a fantastic slide deck, so we would rather build, implement and run the solutions that create them.

In Stockholm, we are a small, tight-knit team of 20 colleagues who create business impact for our clients hands-on, from finding the most impactful way to reach a goal to architecting and coding the solution. Behind us stands a larger team in Finland and a community of 150+ consultants across the Nordics in software development, data & AI, design and marketing technology, always ready to help when you face a challenge you have not solved before (and there will be many).

We run our business as a community, with high autonomy, big responsibility and trust from day one. No line managers and no red tape, but all the support you need.

The job & what you’d be working on

As Managing Consultant, Tech (which is the internal name of the role), you take technical ownership of our client engagements. You are the person our clients trust when they need to make big technology decisions, and the person who can also open the editor and build it. In practice, this means:

• You are a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders (CTOs, CDOs, heads of digital and business owners), helping them connect technology choices to revenue, customers and efficiency.

• You design architectures that fit the problem at hand: sometimes a lean MVP on an existing platform delivered in weeks, sometimes a scalable, composable or microservice-based platform for a large organisation.

• You stay hands-on. You code, prototype, review and work with APIs, integrations and cloud infrastructure, and you lead by example in the team.

• You help clients turn AI from hype into business value: finding the use cases that matter, building AI-powered features and agents, and leading by example in how AI changes the way software gets built.

• You lead and grow multidisciplinary teams with fellow Roadies and client stakeholders, and you make sure quality, security and delivery hold up when things get complex.

• You help grow our Stockholm business: shaping proposals and solution designs together with our sales team, spotting new opportunities with existing clients, and building the tech competence in our Stockholm team.

Our projects focus on digital sales: ecommerce platforms, B2B sales configurators, customer portals, data platforms, integrations and AI solutions. Examples of work we do:

• SAS - AI strategy and implementation

• Fortum - Growth Operations and AI strategy

• Nordic Finance - CRM, Web and Growth Operations

• Leading car repair company - AI enabled development, Marketing Automation and Customer Data

• Leading transportation company in the Nordics: App/Web/Ecom

Skills and experience we expect you to have:

Tech experience

• 8+ years of hands-on experience in software development, including a lead or architect role.

• Versatile experience across diverse operating environments (e.g., enterprise corporations, fast-paced scale-ups, or digital consultancies), with a proven ability to adapt engineering practices to varying organisational maturities.

• A proven track record of architecting and building solutions of very different sizes, from small MVPs to large, business-critical systems.

• Deep expertise in a primary backend ecosystem (Node.js, TypeScript, Python, Java/Kotlin, Go, or .NET) alongside cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Full-stack comfort across modern frontend frameworks (Astro, React, Next.js), APIs, microservices, and system integrations.

• You’ve built with AI in production, not just in demos, whether that’s LLM-powered features, agents or RAG. You’ve also used agentic coding tools enough to have opinions on how they change the way a team delivers business value.

Consulting skills

• Strong communication skills. You can explain complex technical choices in business terms and confidently challenge clients when needed.

• Experience in consulting, digital commerce or client-facing roles is a strong plus.

• Languages: professional proficiency in Swedish and English is a must.

Mindset

• You love architecture and strategy, but you are not looking for a purely managerial role. You still want to build.

• Technology is a tool for you. You choose what solves the business problem, not what looks best on the CV.

• You are curious and hyped about what AI makes possible, and you experiment with new tools in your own work.

• You take ownership, act like an entrepreneur and want to help build the Stockholm team (business, consulting and community).

• You believe in learning by doing and in supporting your fellow Roadies.

Recruitment process

Our recruitment process typically involves 2–3 interviews where we learn about your skills and what motivates you. You will discover more about Columbia Road and meet various Roadies along the way. A case where you get to show how you approach architecture and business problems might be part of the process. After our discussions, we will reach out to your chosen references.

Deadline to apply: November 22nd, 2026. Please note that we interview candidates during the application period and will fill the position as soon as we find the right match, so apply as soon as possible.

Questions about the role? Contact: Simon Fransson (simon.fransson@columbiaroad.com).

Why join Columbia Road?

• A community-led organisation built on trust. Lots of responsibility and autonomy from day one, no line managers, but all the support you need from a world-class community.

• Real influence: in a small Stockholm team, your ideas shape both our client work and how we grow.

• Exciting projects with great clients, and a technology-agnostic, business-driven approach.

• Access to 150+ experts across the Nordics and a structure for continuous learning (Lessons Learned, meetups, competence weeklies, unlimited learning budget).

• Option to buy company shares through the common employee share program.

• Office in Stockholm, equipped with refreshments. We also work from our clients’ premises.

• A wide selection of quality tools to use for your work (laptop, phone etc.) and a mobile phone subscription.

• Health insurance incl. mental health, pension and other insurances.

• Wellness allowance (friskvårdsbidrag): 5,000 SEK / year (pro-rated).

• Retirement pension plan (tjänstepension) of 7% of salary.

• Meaningful Roadie-ideated internal and external events and activities.

• Possibility to work on open-source or social impact projects in your free time and get compensated for it.

• Diversity, equity and inclusion are at the heart of who we are, and everyone at Columbia Road is committed to these values.

Stockholm | Software Development Consulting | Full-time

We look forward to hearing from you, future Roadie!