Modelling Software Engineering Manager in Oxford

The Origin Model sits at the centre of Aurora's forecasting capability, allowing Aurora to help governments, investors, and utilities make billion-dollar decisions on the journey to net zero. The models span power markets across the globe — translating complex energy system dynamics into robust, scalable software that underpins our market outlooks, client insights, and software platforms. We now need a dedicated manager for the Origin Model Development team — the 3–4 squads (roughly 15–20 engineers) that build and operate these models and the platform that runs them.

You’ll be responsible for supporting the team, ensuring delivery stays on track, and building a strong hiring pipeline. This is a management role, not a technical lead role — but it requires genuine technical credibility. The team builds complex energy modelling software and platform infrastructure, and you need to understand enough of what your engineers are doing to have meaningful development conversations and to spot when a technical problem is causing a delivery problem. That credibility comes from having done technical work yourself. The measure of success is a team that is both high performing and genuinely happy to be here — for us, those are the same thing. Engineers who feel supported, challenged, and recognised do better work. That's the job.

You will form part of the senior leadership within Model and Platform Engineering, reporting to the Head of Model and Platform Engineering. Aurora takes the work seriously. We do not take ourselves too seriously. The team that operates well is one where people are direct, admit mistakes, and enjoy the work. The person in this role will shape what it feels like to work within the Origin Model Development team and set the culture.

• Build and sustain a team that is high performing and a genuinely good place to work — create an environment where engineers are challenged by their work, recognised for their contributions, and comfortable raising problems early, to you and to each other.
• Lead the people in the team and their development: line‑manage the team’s most senior engineers — their 1:1s, performance reviews, development plans, and career conversations — and own the line‑management function across the whole team, setting standards, making and managing line‑management assignments, training squad leads to manage their engineers well, and acting as the escalation point for any situation heading toward a formal performance or HR process.
• Own delivery across the team’s 3–4 squads: sprint cadence, capacity planning, blocker removal, and process quality; maintain enough technical visibility to distinguish delivery problems from technical ones.
• Own and continually raise the bar on the team’s engineering delivery practices — modern Agile / Continuous Delivery, healthy sprint flow, and the disciplines that make delivery predictable and high quality.
• Continuously improve how the team delivers: identify what is slowing the team down and drive the changes that fix it — process, tooling, and ways of working — including applying AI tooling where it measurably reduces friction or improves delivery signal (requirements gathering, flow metrics, sprint analytics, delivery communications).
• Partner with Product to align delivery with business outcomes — translate engineering capacity and delivery reality into the prioritisation conversation so the team is always working on what matters most commercially.
• Identify training needs across the team and own a plan to address them — technical skills gaps, process, and organisational effectiveness — then track whether it is making a difference.
• Build and own recruitment plans for the team, running the hiring process end‑to‑end: job specs, screening, interview coordination, and hiring recommendations.
• Own the cross‑team people and process interfaces — with Product Engineering and with the Modelling team — ensuring working relationships are productive, dependencies are tracked, and ownership is unambiguous.

Required attributes:

• 4–6+ years of engineering management experience with a track record of managing mixed technical teams.
• A software engineering background — you have written production code in a professional context and can hold a technically credible conversation with a Senior or Principal engineer; you understand the work, not just the process around it.
• Hands‑on experience implementing modern Agile / Continuous Delivery practices in a software team — you have raised a team’s delivery maturity, not just operated within someone else’s process.
• Proven track record of running real performance conversations: direct feedback, development plans, and follow‑through — not just annual reviews.
• Strong delivery instincts — you know when a sprint is quietly going off the rails, and you can tell whether the root cause is technical or organisational.
• Experience owning hiring end‑to‑end: you have run a recruitment pipeline and can evaluate technical candidates in context.
• A direct communicator — you escalated clearly and do not let difficult conversations drift.

Desirable attributes:

• Experience managing engineers across both platform/infrastructure and domain‑specific software (scientific computing, data engineering, fintech, or similar).
• Commercial awareness — you connect engineering delivery to business outcomes and partner effectively with product and commercial stakeholders.
• Demonstrable interest in applying AI tooling to engineering delivery — requirements tooling, flow analytics, sprint automation; hands‑on experience doing so is a strong plus.

• Private Medical Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Parental Support
• Salary‑Exchange Pension
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Local Oxford Discounts
• Cycle‑to‑work Scheme
• Flu Jabs

We are committed to offering flexibility in the way we work. Most of our roles are hybrid with a mix of in‑office/home working and potentially adjustable working hours. The Company is committed to the principle that no employee or job applicant shall receive unfavourable treatment on grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy, and maternity.