A fantastic opportunity for a Head of Engineering / Software Development Manager 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 minimum of 2 days a week in the Milton Keynes office, UK based
Salary: £85,000 - £95,000 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
You will have progressed through a Software Developer career path - while this isn't a hands on role, having an incredibly strong technical understanding and knowledge of a range of technologies is very important
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 / .NET / Python / Java / JavaScript / C# / Software Development Manager / Softwre Engineering Manager