Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

Location: London (Hybrid)

As Head of Engineering, you'll strategically lead and own the outcomes for the EMEA Delivery Engineering teams, playing a pivotal role in a rapidly scaling environment. This position is highly strategic, architecture-focused, and completely hands-off, ideal for someone passionate about delivering high-quality software products and providing visionary leadership. You will manage approximately eight direct reports and oversee large engineering teams, including a newly formed 40-person European project squad.

Your role involves strategic roadmap planning, architectural oversight, and close collaboration with senior stakeholders, including regular engagement at the C-suite level. Strong stakeholder management and interpersonal skills are essential to effectively engage and influence internal stakeholders.

The engineering teams primarily utilise Java, AWS, React, and TypeScript for front-end development. Although this role is hands-off, a solid technical understanding of these technologies is important for effective architectural oversight.

This role offers the opportunity to lead in a highly visible position, integral to strategic customer-facing projects across Europe. You will be involved in complex technical solutions directly impacting millions of end-users, especially within the utilities sector focusing on electricity and water. You'll significantly influence engineering best practices, architecture, and strategic direction, emphasising external product delivery. Collaboration with senior stakeholders provides high visibility and the chance to make a direct organisational impact. You will also be responsible for developing high-performing teams and promoting individual professional growth, contributing to substantial operational scaling and adopting cutting-edge technologies.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Provide strategic leadership, mentorship, and guidance to technical leads and engineering managers, managing multiple teams and substantial projects.
2. Collaborate closely with Customer Success and Project Delivery teams, aligning engineering capabilities with customer and business requirements.
3. Drive agile methodologies, continuous improvement, and innovation within engineering practices.
4. Engage regularly with external clients, championing a customer-first mindset and driving engineering innovation based on customer insights.
5. Oversee high-level strategic and architectural planning, working closely with solution architects.
6. Monitor and enhance team performance and customer satisfaction, focusing on efficiency and profitability.
7. Foster an inclusive, high-performing, and collaborative team environment.
8. Champion knowledge transfer, adoption of emerging technologies, security enhancements, and automation initiatives.

Experience Required:

1. Proven leadership in managing engineering teams with successful delivery of external, customer-focused SaaS or consultancy-driven projects.
2. Strong expertise in agile methodologies and software delivery best practices.
3. Experience in modern technical environments (microservices, event-driven architecture, cloud-native).
4. Demonstrable strategic thinking aligning technical strategy with business objectives.
5. Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, capable of effectively engaging and influencing senior stakeholders.