Head of Engineering

A fantastic opportunity for a Head of Engineering to join a well established software organisation undergoing a major technical evolution. This is a senior strategic role leading engineering, QA and cloud operations through a significant SaaS migration and AI enablement programme. You will drive organisational development, technical excellence and delivery maturity while guiding the modernisation of a complex product suite used at scale across two main sectors.

Location:
Hybrid with 2 days a week in the Milton Keynes office, UK based

Salary:
£85,000 - £90,000 per annum with excellent benefits and performance bonus

Requirements for Head of Engineering:

• Strong experience leading large engineering organisations delivering enterprise SaaS products, or transforming legacy on premise or hosted products into SaaS models
• Proven leadership background managing engineering managers and multiple cross functional teams
• Strong ability to build, develop and scale technical organisations of 30 people or more
• Deep technical grounding with hands on exposure to Azure, AWS or GCP, enterprise software architecture and modern engineering practices
• Experience of large scale platform migrations, customer transitions and maintaining service continuity
• Background working with blended QA teams and embedding quality engineering practices
• Understanding of SRE principles, Infrastructure as Code and cloud operations in product driven environments
• Excellent ability to drive collaboration across engineering, product, security, professional services and customer facing teams
• Highly advantageous experience includes: regulated environments, multi cloud operations, AI or ML integration, multi region deployments, education sector systems, API first platforms, legacy to modern engineering uplift

Responsibilities for Head of Engineering:

• Lead and develop engineering managers and technical leads, embedding a culture of quality, innovation and customer focus
• Shape talent strategy, build high performing teams and create clear progression frameworks across engineering
• Oversee outsourced QA partnership, define quality metrics, integrate QA within agile workflows and drive continuous improvement in automation and quality engineering
• Lead the evolution of cloud operations into a product aligned SRE function, embedding Infrastructure as Code, reliability principles and operational excellence
• Partner closely with product, CTO and wider business teams to ensure delivery aligns with strategic priorities
• Collaborate with sales, customer experience, professional services and implementation teams to support customer transitions
• Embed security by design in collaboration with information security and compliance teams
• Provide architectural direction for SaaS migration, cloud native evolution, microservices, API design and AI engineering methodologies
• Guide the introduction of AI capabilities across the product suite and ensure responsible AI practices, governance and sector aligned compliance
• Drive platform modernisation, customer migration tooling, integration frameworks and data integrity for large scale transitions
• Maintain engineering standards covering code quality, documentation, testing, CI/CD, observability and security
• Establish metrics driven engineering practices and lead initiatives to reduce lead time, improve deployment frequency and optimise reliability
• Ensure compliance with ISO27001, GDPR, PCI DSS and sector specific requirements

Key focus areas for the first 18 to 24 months:

• Deliver the engineering enablement plan across SaaS and AI objectives
• Oversee the technical and operational direction of the SaaS transformation
• Ensure smooth, reliable customer migrations with no service disruption
• Strengthen organisational capability through structured hiring and development
• Embed AI engineering maturity, infrastructure and best practice
• Drive improvements in deployment cadence, reliability and operational excellence

What the role offers:

• Leadership of a high impact engineering function during a major technology transformation
• The opportunity to shape the future of a complex product suite used at scale
• Collaborative, people focused working culture with strong professional development pathways

Applications:
If you would like to apply for this unique Head of Engineering position, please send your CV via the relevant links.

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Keywords:
Head of Engineering / Director of Engineering / Engineering Manager / VP Engineering / Software Engineering Lead / SaaS Engineering Lead / Cloud Engineering Manager / Technical Director / Platform Engineering / SRE Leadership / Azure / AWS / GCP / SaaS Migration / Microservices / Infrastructure as Code / Kubernetes / CI/CD / AI Engineering / Machine Learning / API Architecture