Engineering Manager – London OR Manchester - Salary up to £120k
We’re hiring a Hands-On Engineering Manager with deep technical leadership experience across Python, large-scale data systems, and modern AWS infrastructure. You’ll lead a squad of 4 engineers, guiding them through complex technical decisions and helping them deliver high-performance, data-intensive systems operating over hundreds of millions to billions of rows.
The product itself is an AI/ML-driven SaaS platform, and your contributions will train new models, enabling new features and having large greenfield elements to it.
This role blends hands-on technical context with people leadership, delivery focus, and architectural oversight. You’ll drive engineering excellence, ensure high reliability, and cultivate a culture that values clarity, ownership, and strong execution.
What You’ll Be Doing
Lead and develop a squad of 4 engineers, supporting growth, coaching, and high-quality delivery.Set technical direction across Python services, distributed systems, and large-scale data processing.Work heavily with AWS — especially Redshift, Lambda, ECS, S3, plus data formats like Parquet.Shape high-throughput data pipelines and SQL-based workflows, ensuring scalability and performance.Run technical design reviews, guide architecture decisions, and support engineers in navigating trade-offs around performance, cost, and reliability.Champion operational excellence — strong observability, testing discipline, incident response, and SLO ownership.Collaborate with Product & Design to define technical requirements, prioritise roadmaps, and drive measurable outcomes.
Tech Environment You’ll Influence
Primary language: PythonAWS stack: Redshift, Lambda, ECS, S3Data workflows: Parquet, SQL, distributed data pipelinesScale: systems processing hundreds of millions to billions of rowsFocus areas: performance tuning, reliability, cost optimisation, architectural clarity
What You’ll Bring
Prior experience as an Engineering Manager or Tech Lead managing small, high-performing engineering teams.Strong technical background in Python, large-scale data systems, and cloud-native architectures (ideally AWS).Experience owning and improving complex data pipelines and high-throughput systems.Ability to coach engineers across multiple levels while maintaining hands-on architectural and design credibility.Excellent delivery management — simplifying ambiguity, unblocking dependencies, and driving predictable execution.
What Success Looks Like
Your squad of 4 consistently delivers high-quality software and scalable data pipelines with predictable velocity.Clear improvements in system reliability, throughput, and cost efficiency.Strong engineering discipline across design, testing, observability, and incident management.Improved technical foundations and reduced operational toil.Clear, thoughtful communication and alignment across engineering, product, and design.