Department: Software Development
Location: Dudley, West Midlands
Hybrid working: 2-3 days/week office based
Reports to: Chief Technical Officer
Direct Reports: Team Leaders and Software Developers across Europe (mainly UK)
Role Purpose
The Engineering Manager will provide strategic and operational leadership for software development teams responsible for delivering and maintaining a key software product. They will oversee team leaders and developers across Europe, ensuring technical excellence, consistent delivery, high-quality engineering practices and alignment with organisational goals. Working closely with the CTO, they will drive engineering standards, support professional development, and ensure successful execution of the product roadmap.
Key Responsibilities
1. Technical & Delivery Leadership
- Provide overall direction, leadership and oversight for software development teams working on a designated software package.
- Ensure high-quality software delivery through modern engineering practices, code quality, testing and release management.
- Collaborate with the CTO and product stakeholders to plan and deliver the technical roadmap.
- Monitor team performance, delivery timelines and engineering metrics to ensure continuous improvement.
- Promote best-practice CI/CD, cloud-native approaches, architectural consistency and technical innovation
2. People Management & Development
- Line-manage team leaders and senior developers located across Europe.
- Build a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning.
- Conduct regular 1-1s, performance reviews, and support skills and career development.
- Support recruitment, onboarding, and retention of high-quality engineering talent.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Product Management, QA, Operations and Customer Support to ensure smooth delivery cycles.
- Liaise across departments to identify risks, remove blockers, and ensure alignment of technical and business priorities.
- Ensure effective communication across distributed teams and stakeholders.
4. Governance, Quality & Compliance
- Oversee adherence to engineering governance, coding standards, security and regulatory compliance.
- Ensure consistent documentation, release notes, architectural decisions and technical specifications.
- Contribute to budget planning, resource allocation and vendor management where relevant.
5. Strategic Contribution
- Evaluate emerging technologies, tools and engineering approaches for their relevance and potential value.
- Drive continuous improvement across engineering, including process optimisation and organisational scalability.
- Provide technical insights and recommendations to the CTO and leadership team.
Skills & Experience
Essential
- Proven experience as an Engineering Manager, Development Manager or Senior Engineering Lead.
- Strong background in modern engineering practices (cloud services, microservices, CI/CD, automation).
- Experience leading distributed or multi-country engineering teams.
- Strong understanding of systems architecture, design and scalable systems.
- Strong people-leadership skills with experience managing senior engineers.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills.
Desirable
- Experience in SaaS environments or enterprise-scale systems.
- Knowledge of European employment and remote-team considerations.
- Experience working with DevOps, SRE or platform engineering functions.
- Knowledge of Agile principles and experience applying Agile methodologies to support efficient, collaborative and iterative software delivery.
Behaviours & Competencies
- Strategic thinking and strong decision-making ability.
- Collaborative and inclusive leadership style.
- High integrity, professionalism and accountability.
- Strong problem-solving orientation and adaptability.
- Passion for high-performance engineering cultures.
- Passion to deliver quality products and lead others to do the same.
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