Head of Engineering

Department: Engineering

Location: Manchester, UK

Description

Interact provides enterprise-grade intranet software that connects over three million employees to leading global names like Levi's, Domino's, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Technicolor.

Our team of customer-focused problem solvers are passionate about helping organizations to communicate better. We do this together by constantly working to improve every service and product we offer. With offices in New York, Tulsa, and Manchester, we operate across North America, EMEA, and Australia.

Click on any of our vacancies and you'll see one thing in common – they all begin with this message. Why? Because at Interact we treat everyone with the same respect and honesty. Whether you're a developer fresh out of college or a seasoned salesperson, we live the motto that we uphold for our customers: our people are our most valuable assets.

The Head of Engineering is responsible for the Engineering function, managing Technical Leads, and optimising the software engineering in order to deliver against the projects deadlines, product roadmap priorities, and to ensure high quality of deliverables.

The Engineering Department is the beating heart of Interact. Responsible for delivering a broad range of projects across new product features, enhancements, bugs fixes, research and development, the department delivers on the strategic priorities that fuel the growth of our business.

As Head of Engineering, you'll own the success of the Software Engineering function at Interact – delivering innovative, scalable and secure solutions in a predictable and observable manner. You will be tasked with operational management of our development squads, and help refine our overall engineering function.

The role requires strong management skills, revolving around project delivery, process and practices optimisation, improving the throughput of the teams, and being directly responsible for large strategic and impactful projects. It is also important to note that this is a mature and established department, and a long-standing product, serving a large, and existing customer base, with compliance and governance needs to be met.

Our tech stack is primarily Microsoft-focused, with the core product written in .NET (mix of Framework 4.7.2, and .NET 6 – mostly moving to the later), React and Vue on the frontend (moving to React), and MS SQL Server.

You will work very closely with the Head of Software Delivery, Head of Cloud, Principal Technical Architect, and other support roles, including the QA Manager, Release Manager, Head of Product Design and UX, and the Product team.

The role will report to the Director of Engineering and sit alongside the other Head of roles in the hierarchy.

A little about you...

• Availability and capacity management: You can ensure the correct implementation of standards and procedures. Identify capacity issues, and stipulate and instigate the required changes. Initiate remedial action. (Skill level: expert)
• Delivery management: You will be accountable for the delivery of complex projects and changes that are being delivered by multiple teams or have high technical complexity (e.g. intricate coordination of Product, Engineering, and Cloud tasks to achieve a goal.) (Skill level: expert)
• Making a process work: You can identify and challenge organisational processes of increasing complexity and those processes that are unnecessarily complicated. Add value and can coach the organisation to inspect and adapt processes and guide teams through the implementation of a new process. (Skill level: expert)
• Governance and assurance: You can understand how technical governance works with wider governance (such as budget). You can assure corporate services by understanding important risks and mitigating them through assurance mechanisms. (Skill level: expert)
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical: You can mediate between people and mend relationships, communicating with stakeholders at all levels. (Skill level: expert)
• Making and guiding decisions: You can make and justify decisions characterised by high levels of risk, impact and complexity. You can build consensus between teams and stakeholders. (Skill level: expert)
• Management: You are an excellent manager, capable of oiling and managing the software engineering machine, to get more optimal outputs, resolve bottlenecks, manage and clearly articulate the trade-offs, and refine the machine as the team composition, and business needs evolve. (Skill level: expert)
• Strategy: You can shape and influence the implementation strategy – aligning decisions in a way that serve upcoming projects that are not necessarily on the immediate horizon (e.g. setting up certain architectural changes, to enable future enhancements in other areas of the product.) (Skill level: expert)
• Turning business problems into technical design: You can design systems characterised by high levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity. (Skill level: expert)
• Understanding the whole context: You can understand trends and practices outside your organisation and how these will impact your work. You can anticipate changing requirements and flexibility in solutions. (Skill level: expert)

You should apply if:

• You have previously worked as a Software Engineer
• You have previously led, or are currently leading a team of senior engineering talent
• You have experience managing other engineers at varying levels
• You're excited by the prospect of scaling a large team and unlocking latent potential both at the individual, and team level
• You're an excellent delegator – you know done is better than perfect and prefer building systems over writing code

It's a bonus if:

• You have previously managed managers
• You have experience defining and working towards OKRs

About the role...

• Be responsible for a department of 50+ Engineers, with 6-7 direct reports (Technical Leads)
• Running 1-2-1s, refining the onboarding programmes for new starters, performance management, etc.
• Responsible for coordination of development between Interact and Sideways6 (Interact acquired business) on joint-projects
• Be responsible for hiring and scaling the team further in line with business growth goals (processes, and mature Engineering recruitment programmes are in place)
• Not be expected to be hands on writing code, but be expected to be an excellent Engineer by trade, with a strong Software Engineering background – parts of the role will involve whiteboarding solutions, discussing highly technical solutions and nuances, as well as project implementation (code) reviews for risks
• Proactively seek opportunities for process improvements and transformation, and make proposals to the Director of Technology
• Implement operational improvements to the Engineering department, allowing the team to work more effectively, and transparently, based on the agreed upon plan
• Provide operational reporting and progress on strategic initiatives to the Director of Technology via regular Business Review meetings
• Calibrate with your direct reports on the standards, processes, and expectations
• Foster a high degree of standardisation to the organisation and seek out opportunities to apply industry-standard techniques to our business
• Be responsible for governance, solving complex project problems and oversee high-risk changes
• Network and communicate with senior stakeholders across the organisation to build collaborative and effective relationships
• Execute on the direction set by Directory of Technology – in the early stages of the role, a lot of this will be pre-determined (plans and structure are already in place) and your focus will be on calibration
• You will be on absorbing information, learning processes, gathering context/history, and will transition into a more collaborative refinement process as you mature into the role, and gain sufficient context to make effective decisions/recommendations
• Take the lead on release risk review processes, and provide Engineering sign off for releases prior to it being submitted for final sign-off, effectively assuring the quality of implementation is up to par and risks have been identified, and mitigated
• You will also be the responsible party for the outputs of the teams – you would be expected to verify the team outputs prior to release
• Provide in-flight project support where your attention is needed regarding the progress/implementation/guidance, to help re-arrange the resource, help find a path forward, and bring the project back on-track
• Support in project kick-off and scoping phases, to ensure that Engineering is sufficiently represented in the process, and is contributing to the specs being created
• Lead and guide the Technical Leaders and help them understand how to deliver the goals of the department, and the organisation
• Work with the Technical Leaders on implementing improvements to ways of working, helping them build team morale, and keeping the job satisfaction within the teams high

Benefits

• 25 days annual leave (with the option to buy and sell additional days)
• Cycle to work scheme
• Access to Learning & Development platform
• Life Insurance
• Auto Enrolment Pensions
• Healthshield (Cashback on dental check-ups and fillings, eye tests, physiotherapy, prescriptions and much more)
• Reimburse for usage of personal mobile phone
• Free Gym membership and Free Friday lunch for office based staff