VP Engineering Operations

The VP Engineering, Engineering Ops role is part of the Engineering Senior Leadership Team and has accountability for ensuring that the Engineering builds coherent, secure and fit for purpose software across the strategic products that make up its Cloud Platform; that we have effective Ways of Working, including production software ownership; that we increase productivity and reduce cost of engineering resource; that we have consistency in our global delivery centres, and that we continually improve our technical competency in line with our resourcing long term plan

The role in detail

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Provide expert perspective – working with Engineering Directors, Product & Architecture functions - on the way that functional and non-function requirements, design goals, principles and standards are understood by software engineering teams across our domains and translated into consistently simple, scalable and innovative software solutions.
• Take a lead in driving improvements to engineering ways of working from build, test and deploy to production, and post deployment M&A regimes across multiple cloud platforms, products and technologies; building on the companies global SDLC that underpins engineering efficiency and effectiveness.
• Work with Product and Architecture functions to ensure they consistently do their part to ensure engineering teams have what they need to be effective – so well-crafted sets of architecture outputs (logical architecture diagrams, service contracts, API specifications) and well formed requirements (product backlogs, non-functional requirements, use cases) and so on
• Take a lead in ensuring that we consistently build software products that operate to the required service levels to support our global customer base and standards expected of modern Cloud/SaaS services. establishing secure processes and systems used to prevent, detect, mitigate and recover from cyberattacks. Provide education and perspective to business leaders on managing technology risks
• Be the custodian of production deployment, monitoring and alerting regimes; ensure careful planning and lessons learnt. Take technical ownership of DevOps team and processes as well as our test and staging environments.
• Work with Engineering Directors to maintain appropriately sized and cost-effective software engineering teams, assist in the selection and managing of new third parties appropriate to project workload. Take ownership of Engineering Managers of the companies owned COE’s in Romania and India.
• Consistently evaluate software engineering efficiency, driving automation wherever possible, leveraging modern technologies - such as engineering AI support - to maximise our development potential. Track, analyse and act upon platform and software engineering proficiency/performance metrics, including optimizing the distribution of high performing engineers across our product portfolio.
• Act as gatekeeper for recruitment across UK, Americas, Romania and India COE’s. Take a lead in the establishment of skill developments to develop/maintain skill levels throughout the technology team. Ensure coherent personal development planning and career development frameworks
• Ensure we do not duplicate the technology that we already use, having a clear view of the platforms and their capabilities, maximising service reuse across our global product portfolio
• Lead a cohort of Principal Software Engineers to give sufficient coverage to drive accountabilities
• Work with US based VP, Engineering to ensure consistency of approach appropriate for a global software engineering operation

What Success Looks Like

• Great software that supports our customers
• A software engineering team seen to deliver to its potential, across UK, Americas, Romania and India
• Consistent software engineering standards applied, maximised reuse, maximised ability to deploy engineering resources across domains as needs arise
• Speed and accuracy of releases improving over time
• A recognisable identity for the company’s Engineering

Requirements

• Previous Head of Engineering of a similar sized (or larger) organisation. Ideally with product knowledge that aligns to those offered by the company.
• Extensive experience in end-to-end product lifecycle management, including engineering and technical leadership.
• Proven experience of having overseen the successful architecting, build and operation of modern SaaS platforms based in AWS and/or Azure. This includes cloud native platforms, API first design principles, and the migration from on-prem/monolithic services. Demonstrable experience and ability to leverage data architecture implementations, with large data volumes and cloud native database technologies.
• Seasoned technologist with significant experience in building, integrating and running technical platform/product infrastructure and application-oriented mission critical commercial services to paying customers.
• Proven track record in building, evolving and maintaining a software engineering function that manages platforms and products from modern distributed cloud through to desktop. Proven experience in leadership role in an environment specialising in development methodologies such as Agile, DevOps & Site Reliability Engineering. Experience working internationally with a variety of cultures, thinking globally
• Breadth of experience in leading and legacy technologies and the ability to effectively evaluate current state technology landscapes and develop and execute modernization, consolidation, and convergence plans.
• Experience integrating AI capabilities to SaaS platforms and user journeys is highly desirable
• Strong experience preparing and presenting high quality and engaging presentations – able to influence large groups of senior stakeholders through compelling storytelling.
• Commercially astute, considering and clearly demonstrating the resulting value of any proposed investment or strategy. Be motivated by commercial and customer oriented KPI’s.
• Previous experience of technology due diligence, acquisition integration; combining and scaling products and technologies
• Proven track record of successfully developing and delivering complex products, at scale, on budget and on time.

Personal qualities

• A proactive, energetic, pragmatic, hardworking individual with strong stakeholder management and team building skills
• A sense of urgency - multi-tasking, prioritization skills and ability to collaborate and work in a fast-paced environment, adapting to rapid change
• Excellent organizational, analytical, problem management, written and oral communication

Skills

• Strong influencing, negotiating and problem solving skills
• A highly developed ability to deal with ambiguity and fluid situations
• Strong people management skills, including developing and mentoring people within and outside of the team