Let’s be honest, no matter how technically talented the software engineering team is, without expert leadership, people fail to reach their full potential, which affects productivity and output and sometimes creates an environment that is less than perfect. When you then throw serious scale into the equation the challenge can get much more, well.....challenging!

As a seasoned and experienced leader, you'll understand this right, and you'll have done your fair share of troubleshooting! Perhaps you've built a resilient approach and have the capabilities and experience required to unpick and rebuild large enterprise software engineering teams. If you're nodding, while reading this, we really should set up a call asap!

Let me break this opportunity down for you!

COMPANY
No doubt, you will have heard about this organisation in the media. They are the number one in their space and are part way through an enormous digital transformation, affecting historic group companies and recent acquisitions, most of them, household names.

Their growth has been astonishing. With serious finance comes serious scale, but with scale, they're now at a critical point and need to iron out a few creases, in readiness to build and release some ambitious technology innovation. So it’s now time to take stock and install a layer of solid senior leadership capable of taking the software engineering team/teams forward and delivering on one heck of a product roadmap.

TEAM
The Director would manage all of the heads of engineering (assigned to each tribe) and their teams plus the practice engineering team (HoE + 4 Principal Engineers).

They practice the Tribe model. 5 Tribes currently with a number of squads (usually 4 or 5) centred around value streams. Each tribe has around 30-40 engineers which a Head of Engineering would be accountable for (SW Engineers, Tech Leads, Principal Engineers) but also have Product Owners, UX, Architects, BAs to complement the work.

These roles work into our product function. There’s a small Practice Engineering function that help coach the teams on tech, ways of working and solving problems. They also have small Tech Ops, InfoSec & Data teams that complete the technology organisation.

STACK
They operate an Event Driven Architecture and it is Typescript for everything. Development is typescript front to back (React in the front and Node.Js in the back). Hosted on AWS again in typescript/CDK.

They operate “Everything as Code” so infra is serverless, testing, synthetics/observability etc all built in the development pipelines. This means mobility across the tech stack is easy for their engineering teams but also lets the teams focus on the important things at pace rather than having separate test teams or teams wrestling with infrastructure config as examples. Genius!

In terms of guiding tech principals:

· CICD by default

· Secure by default

· Empower teams with explicit guardrails

· Remove effort and improve resilience via automation

· Aim for “Everything as code”

· Practice Observability driven development

· Aim to commit and release often

· Fail fast, fix quick, own our platforms

CHALLENGE
While this organisation has hired and built teams full of exceptional technical talent they are lacking in mature and experienced leadership. The leadership oil is missing from the software engineering machine and as such, there is a lack of clarity and vision, and ultimately direction. It will be your responsibility to inject this back into the software engineering function.

It will be your immediate responsibility to reset the balance, ways of working and best practices, interaction and collaboration communications and drive positive behaviours. In addition, you will empower the Head Of to manage with autonomy, drive a culture of exploration and creativity

Unlike many organisations, the challenge, in this case, is not technical, this is about people, processes, culture, performance and delivery!

CANDIDATE
We’re looking for a Director of Software Engineering who has the capability and experience to manage software development teams at scale. You will consume leadership books and TED talks for breakfast and have many years of experience in building and/or transforming software engineering teams with best-practice methodologies in mind. You may no longer have your finger on the pulse technically and architecturally, but that doesn't matter. Our ideal candidate now gets their excitement and buzz from driving innovation, performance and delivery through people!

This is a rare and unusual opportunity, it's exciting, but it’s also no bed or roses. However, if you up for what could be the biggest challenge of your professional career, please get in touch for a frank and honest discussion, warts and all!

PACKAGE
Salary up to £155,000 + Bonus + Benefits + Car + Health + Pension - Remote with two days per month in the office situated in the North of England.

RECRUITER
Simon Bucknell (me) is a technology recruiter and technology recruitment business owner with over 25 years of experience. I recruit across a range of technology and digital disciplines and partner with organisations that are building or transforming technology teams.

Please drop me a message on Linkedin or apply and I’ll reach out to you to discuss this role further.

Director of Enterprise Software Engineering