Job Title Director of Engineering - Decision Platform Job Description About UnderwriteMe UnderwriteMe is a UK based Insurtech creating disruptive SaaS solutions for the insurance industry. We are on a mission to make life insurance more widely accessible, providing technology to ensure people and their loved ones are protected when the inevitable happens. We are wholly owned by Pacific Life, but operate as an autonomous business within the company. This gives us the best of both worlds - the freedom to act like a technology scale-up, with the stability of a large company meaning longer-term thinking and no last minute pivots to gain our next funding round. Pacific Life Re became 100% shareholder of UnderwriteMe in 2017 given the strategic synergy with its reinsurance business. UnderwriteMe has two main products we sell to customers: Decision Platform - a B2B enterprise platform that provides a best-in-market Underwriting Rules Engine used by over 30 insurers to power their underwriting decisions. The product is sold across UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific and North America. The platform combines our engine with technology to source and process third-party information supporting underwriting decisions for insurers. We are already working on capabilities, powered by AI, to make these decisions even more efficient. Protection Platform - a B2B2C marketplace used by over 15,000 advisors to power quoting and purchase of protection products in the UK. We currently deliver 16% of the UK markets protection policies and we are already working to increase our reach. UnderwriteMe is part-way through a multi-year transformation to adopt a Product operating Model, modernising our architecture and moving our products to a SaaS model. We still have much to do, and we’re looking for people to join us on this challenging and exciting journey. Pacific Life and UnderwriteMe are both organisations focussed on creating a great environment in which to work. We recognise that attracting and retaining top talent is how we continue to improve the company. We pay well and as we are part of a mature organisation, we have a good benefits package. We value and celebrate diversity in our teams and continually work to celebrate the uniqueness of each person. We work in a hybrid model and we expect our leaders to flex where they work based on the needs of the company and their teams.| The Role We are looking for a Director of Engineering to join us to lead Engineering for our Decision Platform product. Internally this will be an AVP (Assistant Vice President) level. What you will be doing You will lead engineering for the four cross functional squads within the decision platform, directly managing the Tech Leads for each squad along with the Delivery Manager. You will represent engineering in the product triad, working in partnership with Product Managers and Design to build out the strategy and roadmap for Decision Platform. You will be a member of the Decision Platform cross-functional leadership team along with counterparts from Product, Product Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. This team is responsible for leading the product, making decisions from our overall strategy (in line with the UnderwriteMe corporate strategy) as well as deciding where to make investments in the product. You will also be a member of the Engineering leadership at UnderwriteMe, collaborating with other engineering leaders, working on improving our overall engineering function. What type of person fits the role You are technically great, with a strong understanding of engineering and engineering leadership. You can sit with engineers and debate technical concepts but are also capable of describing these concepts to non engineers clearly. You thrive on moving between different levels of detail depending on what the situation needs. You understand engineering leadership best practices with regards to creating autonomous cross functional teams and how to measure their success. You are a visionary who drives the team, providing clarity and guidance to enable us to move at speed. You care as much about the product we create and the value that creates for our customers as you do engineering excellence. You are a creative problem solver. Working with your team, direct reports and peers, you directly solve problems. You care more about solving the problem than simply talking about it. You look for creative solutions to problems, understanding when to focus on dealing with the root causes and when a quick fix will suffice. You are a curious coach. You love helping others to improve. Your curiosity means you want to understand why things work the way that they do, before you look to improve them. Your coaching extends across all your relationships and you’re comfortable coaching people both within and outside of engineering. You are an entrepreneurial, strategic thinker. This role sits on the leadership team for the product and needs to be comfortable creating and challenging business and product strategy as well as leading in the creation of engineering strategy. You care about creating business value with technology and not just using the latest technology or job title to put on your CV. You have a growth mindset. You respectfully challenge the status-quo. You are continually looking to improve yourself and your teams. You actively seek out and give feedback and do this in a way that builds strong relationships with your team and peers. You think about working iteratively, using experiments and data to drive how you make decisions. You thrive in a fast paced environment with large amounts of uncertainty. You are comfortable working to transform an organisation, accepting this means that everything is not working perfectly today. Technical Requirements You are an experienced engineering leader, acting as manager of managers across multiple cross functional product teams. You have a strong grounding in core computer science principles and software engineering practices You’ve been working in teams following modern software delivery methodologies, such as agile, lean, and DevOps. You know how to create and change org structures to improve the value driven by your teams. You’ve worked in cross functional teams, developing and executing technical and product strategy You’ve built modern cloud-native systems You’ve built SaaS products and understand the patterns used to build them You’ve worked with enterprise / B2B software and understand the challenges, extra bonus if you’ve implemented ISO 27001 / SOC2 practices in engineering If you feel that you’ve met most of the requirements above, even if it isn’t everything, please do reach out and apply. About UnderwriteMe UnderwriteMe is an Insurtech software business and subsidiary of Pacific Life Re (PL Re), a global life and pensions reinsurance firm. We have a vision to help everyone purchase protection insurance by using data and disruptive technology to transform our partners and markets in order to make their underwriting processes as quick and efficient as possible. Our core products are: • a best-in-market Underwriting Rules Engine which can be used to automate any structured data within the underwriting journey, and which is sold in the UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific and North America • the Protection Platform, an end-to-end quote and buy marketplace for Protection in the UK Working for UnderwriteMe Joining UnderwriteMe means being part of a technology company that is committed to bringing a fresh and dynamic approach to insurance. You’d be working with a team of highly technical experts made up of people with backgrounds in software, fintech, and insurance. Every person in our global team is valued for the unique qualities they bring to our business and we seek to build their expertise and support their individual ambitions at every step. Of course, we take our work seriously and we know our team can operate under great pressure. We work hard and thrive on achievement, but we also know how to have fun and relax too. We regularly host a range of team building days to strengthen our team's connection with each other and reflect on their successes. Providing employees with a healthy work-life balance is very important to our culture. We have a wide range of employee benefits and we host regular social activities and wellbeing initiatives. We are also committed to supporting our employee's involvement in their communities, by actively fundraising, hosting charity events, and overseeing volunteering opportunities. Benefits (Only for Permanent and Fixed Term Employees) • Stakeholder Pension Scheme • Life Assurance • Subsidised Gym Membership • Private Medical Insurance • Season Ticket Loan • Eye Care • Employee Assistance Programme • Group Income Protection • Wellness Benefits As part of our commitment to accessibility for all, UnderwriteMe will, upon the request of the applicant, provide accommodation during the recruitment process to ensure equal access to applicants with disabilities. Please contact us about your needs, and we will consult with you to ensure suitable accommodation is provided. UnderwriteMe Principles and Behaviours Please click here to view our company principles and behaviours