Software Engineering Director / VP of Engineering Excellence / Chief Engineer – Driving Excellence in Engineering - £160-180k + 30% bonus level - 2 days a week in the office plus potentially odd trips to India and the US.
Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer
Are you a software engineering leader passionate about delivering high-quality, scalable SaaS products who has worked in large engineering teams? (we are talking 350 or so in this case)
We’re looking for an Engineering leader to shape the future of the engineering team and processes, ensuring the seamless delivery of mission-critical solutions across multiple product verticals. The right hand person to the CTO, focused on building engineering excellence almost like a chief of staff but without the direct people leadership and focused on matrix managing and influencing focused on driving quality world class engineering practices across the product engineering teams.
About the Role
You will own the “how” behind product development, focusing on predictable, high-quality delivery. Working closely with the Chief Technology Officer and teams across the organisation, you will drive innovation and operational excellence while embedding best practices and a culture of continuous improvement.
This functional role spans all product verticals, combining leadership, strategy, and technical expertise to create a world-class engineering organisation.
Key Responsibilities
* Lead Development Practices: Define and continuously improve the software development lifecycle (SDLC), tailoring Agile models to align with business needs.
* Champion Engineering Excellence: Establish and maintain engineering standards (e.g., coding practices like BDD) to ensure consistency and quality across teams.
* Foster Continuous Improvement: Build a culture of improvement by benchmarking metrics like DORA and driving initiatives to enhance key performance areas.
* Measure Success: Define and monitor leading and lagging metrics to assess progress and inform decision-making.
* Develop Engineering Talent: Act as a functional leader by designing roles, career ladders, training programs, and communities of practice.
* Embed DevSecOps: Promote a DevSecOps culture to balance speed and security in engineering operations.
* Optimize the Product Lifecycle: Collaborate across the organization to streamline processes from ideation to delivery.
* Drive Tooling Strategy: Select and implement the optimal engineering toolchain.
* Promote Ownership: Cultivate a “you build it, you run it” ethos to empower engineering teams.
* Quality-First Focus:
* Build and implement a comprehensive quality strategy.
* Define key quality metrics and lead improvement initiatives.
* Drive consistency in testing and quality assurance across all product verticals.
About You
You’re an experienced engineering leader with a proven track record of driving excellence across teams and processes. You thrive in dynamic, high-growth environments and are passionate about fostering a quality-first, DevSecOps culture.
Your Experience and Skills Include:
* Demonstrated success as a Chief Engineer or Enterprise Architect or Engineering leader, implementing quality-focused strategies across engineering teams.
* Deep expertise in Agile and DevOps frameworks, with experience leading distributed global teams.
* Strong technical acumen paired with business-savvy decision-making.
* Visionary leadership skills, with the ability to inspire, coach, and influence cross-functional teams.
* Exceptional communication skills to align technical strategies with business goals.
The Career Opportunity
Often this experience is on the "to do" list, you sit there with your other Head of Engineering Product leaders and no on really owns it, but add this role to your people leadership experience and thats a nice breath of combination to support your growth into a future number 1 CTO role.