Development Manager

We’re 1st Central, a market-leading insurance company utilising smart data and technology at pace. Rapid growth has been based on giving our 1.4 million customers exactly what they want: great value insurance with an excellent service. And that’s the same for our colleagues too; we won Insurance Employer of the Year at the British Insurance Awards 2024 and our Glassdoor score is pretty mega too!

We’re on the hunt for a Software Development Manager who’ll play a pivotal role in leading and enabling our software engineers who are embedded within cross functional value stream teams. The Software Development Manager will be accountable for ensuring that engineering excellence is upheld across the federated model, where teams adopt DevOps and SOLID principles using .Net, leverage modern cloud technologies including Azure, and will take full ownership of their products and services – from development through to operations.

You’ll also provide strategic and people leadership to foster high-performing engineering culture focussed on quality, continuous improvement, resilience and business value delivery. We value flexible working arrangements, so you can choose to work remotely or maybe you live within a commutable distance from one of our offices in Salford Quays, Manchester, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, or Guernsey, and want to work in the office occasionally.

Core skills we’re looking for to succeed in the role:

• Proven experience in software leadership within agile, cross functional team environments
• Strong understanding and practical application of DevOps principles and cloud native technologies
• Solid foundation in software architecture and design, including application of SOLID principles and modern design patterns
• Familiarity with AI/ML tools
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Proven ability to manage and develop engineering talent in a matrixed or federated model
• Experience managing partner/vendor relationships
• Beneficial - Azure certified
• Beneficial - Other cloud platform certification
• Good understanding of a service-based approach to technology, including component, service oriented and event driven architectures

What’s involved:

• You’ll manage, mentor and support a group of software engineers distributed across multiple cross functional teams, ensuring alignment with career development, performance goals and organisational standards
• You’ll champion engineering best practice including CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, observability and secure coding standards within a DevOps culture
• You’ll guide teams in leveraging cloud platforms, e.g. Azure, AWS to build scalable, resilient and cost-effective solutions
• Instill a mindset of full product ownership within teams, accountable for both building and operating services
• You’ll drive efficiencies across the software development cycle by identifying, piloting and adopting emerging practices and tools
• You’ll collaborate closely with Principal Engineers, Quality Engineers, Product Owners, Architects, RTEs and delivery leads to ensure engineering execution is aligned with business goals and technology, including AI powered solutions to optimise coding, testing, deployment, monitoring and support
• You’ll prioritise the requirements for development and agree the delivery against these requirements by understanding the business priorities, the technical capability and the strategies of both the business and technology
• You’ll build and maintain strong relationships with external and internal technology partners, ensuring effective collaboration, alignment with engineering standards, and value delivery from third party services or vendor engagements
• You’ll drive the recruitment, onboarding and continuous deployment of engineers, ensuring a strong pipeline of talent and future leaders
• You’ll establish and maintain engineering governance frameworks and controls balancing autonomy with consistency across the federated engineering teams
• You’ll promote a culture of leadership, feedback and experimentation support teams to continuously refine their ways of working
• You’ll plan and support the 24/7 on-call rota to manage incidents, security alerts, and escalations as required
• You’ll plan & support the Focus application out of hour releases when required
• You’ll comply with the requirements, and act in accordance with, the Group Code of Conduct and Fitness and Propriety policies at all times
• You’ll ensure compliance with Company Policies, Values and guidelines and other relevant standards/ regulations at all times

Experience & knowledge:

• Experience managing and developing software engineers with cross functional, agile teams, ideally in a federated model with decentralised delivery
• Experience of C# .Net including dependency injection entity framework and unit testing
• Deep understanding of DevOps principles and experience embedding CI/CD pipelines (ideally in ADO), infrastructure as code, automating testing, and monitoring within teams
• Hands on experience designing, building, deploying applications on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) with an understanding of containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes) and serverless technologies
• Working knowledge of full stack solutions from SPA (ideally in Angular) to SQL databases
• Proven ability to lead teams responsible for building and operating software
• Hands on experience implementing software delivery lifecycle tools (ideally ADO) to drive adoption of practices that improve delivery speed, quality and developer experience
• Awareness and application of AI tools and techniques to streamline development and operations
• Working knowledge of agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe), with practical experience adapting agile principles to suit team and enterprise needs
• Solid foundation in software engineering practices, languages, architecture and development frameworks combined with emerging tech, with proven ability to instill and apply SOLID principles
• Strong background in mentoring and growing engineering talent, fostering a culture of ownership, feedback, inclusion and continuous learning

Skills:

• Bachelor's or master’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering or a related technical field
• Proven experience in software leadership within agile, cross functional team environments
• Strong understanding and practical application of DevOps principles and cloud native technologies
• Solid foundation in software architecture and design, including application of SOLID principles and modern design patterns
• Familiarity with AI/ML tools
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Proven ability to manage and develop engineering talent in a matrixed or federated model
• Experience managing partner/vendor relationships
• Beneficial - Azure certified
• Beneficial - Other cloud platform certification
• Good understanding of a service-based approach to technology, including component, service oriented and event driven architectures

Behaviours:

• A customer-centric approach. Collaborate and partner with a variety of stakeholders
• Ability to apply a product mindset
• Self-motivated and enthusiastic
• An organised and proactive approach
• Ability to work on one’s own initiative and as part of a wider team
• Strives to drive business improvements to contribute to the success of the business

So, if you’re up for the challenge and would like to join our vibrant and busy team, we want to hear from you today.

What can we do for you?

People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive.

To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full.

Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.