Overview

Vacancy Name: Software Delivery Manager / Engineering Manager

Vacancy No: VN1138

Employment Type: Full-Time

Division: Global Services

Work Location: Farnborough HQ

Job Details: Position: Software Delivery Manager / Engineering Manager
Location: Farnborough HQ
Working Hours: Full-Time, 40 Hours per week

Are you someone who puts team success first, enjoys improving processes, and thrives in a fast-paced engineering environment?

We are looking for a Software Delivery Manager to join our engineering team of over 25 engineers working across a suite of aviation products. We’re keen to locate a truly pragmatic individual, who believes that delivery to the customer and reducing technical debt is key and that process needs to be continuously evaluated and improved. You will be responsible for delivering weekly releases and ensuring the quality and security standards defined by our Secure Development Lifecycle (SDLC) are maintained. In addition, you will ensure our delivery practices align with secure development and open-source licensing requirements.

Our amazing team currently produce product releases on a weekly cycle to meet customer led requirements; alongside the challenges you’d expect in a fast-paced, complex product environment.

The Software Delivery Manager will be known for being highly organised and enjoy tracking the detail of each delivery using Agile techniques (Scrum/Kanban). You will play an active role in the operational leadership of the business, contributing to cross-functional planning and decision making. You will lead continuous improvement initiatives and own delivery metrics that ensure quality and predictability. A key element of this role is being a central focal point for delivery, being a coach, running ceremony meetings and ensuring predictability and quality is met. You will be less concerned about the “what” and more concerned with the “how” and will need to be a highly collaborative communicator.

This role includes some direct line reports; we’d like the SDM to bring their passion and understanding of core line management and leadership principles. Understanding the importance of maintaining a people focus and providing the right level of support to our team. You will be responsible for formal performance reviews, career development planning, and ensuring each team member has clear objectives.

We’d like to hear from applicants with experience working in multi-discipline teams comprised of product owners, architects, software engineers, front end specialists, QA and Dev Ops engineers. Ideally applicants will also have experience within a scale-up environment or similar.

Responsibilities

• Promoting team delivery and team cohesion to ensure we achieve more as a team than as a set of individuals
• Understand the strengths and development needs of the team, shaping and advising the training and support of engineering team members to address any gaps
• Day to day monitoring of the delivery boards within Azure DevOps and the product backlog items that need to be delivered in the current sprint/iteration
• Communicating with all team members to understand inhibitors to progress and the needs of the team to ensure delivery is achieved in accordance with estimates. Maintaining on-time quality deliverables
• Driving daily standups and other critical ceremony meetings
• Owning or assigning ownership of retro actions
• Assist the team when priorities change, adapting the work and highlighting where decisions are required
• Liaise with customer focused roles including Solution Consultants and Product Owners to report on expected delivery dates
• Work to maintain the business management system and quality management system used by the engineering team
• Writing and maintaining process documentation relating to the engineering delivery function
• Identifying and removing waste from the process
• Perform regular 1-2-1's with team members, highlighting and supporting development opportunities
• Completing required employee appraisals and performance reviews for direct reports

Skills, Qualifications and Experience required

Essential

• Proven experience running a development team of over 25 engineers across multiple locations
• Experience of fast paced, customer led delivery environment (currently weekly release cycle)
• Experience using a delivery management tool such as Azure DevOps or the Atlassian toolset
• Knowledge of Scrum and Kanban techniques
• Able to demonstrate clear understanding of capacity management and the common challenges encountered in planning & estimating
• Ability to lead continuous improvement efforts and report on team delivery metrics
• Understanding the psychology of effective and high performing teams
• Excellent communication, high emotional intelligence and can help the team communicate and collaborate
• Pragmatic, understanding that often the reality differs from the theoretical
• Willing to take ownership and accountability of the engineering process
• Ability to demonstrate effective and practical change management approaches

Advantageous

• Have an interest or direct experience of the aviation/transport industry
• Certified Scrum Master or equivalent certification
• Azure DevOps/VSTS experience
• Software architecture background ideally in cloud deployed software
• Knowledge of C# .NET, JavaScript, Angular, Swift iOS and similar technologies as used within our team

In addition to a Competitive Salary, we will offer you:

• Competitive Group Pension Scheme
• Comprehensive Life Assurance *
• Comprehensive Income Protection *
• Comprehensive Travel Insurance *
• Comprehensive Private Healthcare (after successful passing of probation) *
• Electric Car Scheme
• Free Car Parking
• Discounts at popular Retailers
• 2 Paid Volunteering Days each calendar year (subject to line manager approval)
• Investment in Training, Qualifications and Professional Development

• (Subject to insurance underwriting)

Due to the volume of applications received, only candidates selected for interview will be contacted. If you do not hear from us within 20 working days then your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.