Engineering Manager in Southampton

Who are Benifex? We are a fast-moving technology company, and one of the most successful providers of online reward and benefits solutions in the world. We believe that everyone deserves an exceptional experience at work, every day, and build workplace technology that makes this happen. Benifex’s mission is to build remarkable experiences that employees love. Today Benifex supports more than five million employees in over 3,000 organisations across more than 100 countries. To help us on our quest to be the best, we need brilliant people on board and that’s where you come in.

Why should you apply?

• People: play a pivotal role in nurturing and upskilling our talented engineers
• Impact: help us build a world class engineering culture and organisation where engineers can thrive and we build exceptional products
• Variety: a role that has a wide reaching level of influence across engineering culture, delivery, people, process and technology

Role Overview

On our mission to power how the world delivers exceptional employee experience, Benifex is investing heavily in our Product Engineering organisation, and reshaping how our Engineering Managers operate as we move toward smaller, pod-based AI-native engineering teams. This is a pioneering role: you'll help define what AI-native engineering leadership looks like at Benifex, at a time when very few organisations have real-world experience to draw on. You’ll lead multiple engineering pods, staying genuinely close to the technology and the day-to-day technical performance of your team, not solely directing through meetings and process. This role is to replace a recently promoted Engineering Manager, covering our Benefits teams (primarily .NET-based). Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship and require people to be based in the UK or Ireland for this position.

Great benefits

• £80,000-120,000
• Tech setup of your choice (MacBook Pro or equivalent, monitors, etc.)
• £/€800 annual learning budget, plus two hours per week as ‘Focus Fridays’.
• Flexible work - choose a working setup that works for you, our only ask is to see you once a quarter in our UK HQ
• 25 days holiday plus your local bank holidays
• Your birthday off
• Two half day wellbeing days
• Healthcare cash plan to cover the costs of day to day healthcare
• Employee Assistance Plan 24/7 365 support
• Income Protection (75%) and life assurance (4x salary)
• Pension scheme
• Enhanced parental leave package - 26 weeks fully paid maternity leave and 4 weeks fully paid paternity leave
• £50 monthly allowance to spend on whatever takes your fancy, your very own Benifex card will be topped up at the start of each month!

Responsibilities

• Directly manages engineers across engineering pods, guides work and estimations, and removes blockers, both delivery and technical. You are the first escalation point.
• Actively involved in the technical work of the team, comfortable using AI-assisted and agentic development tools directly, not solely directing through meetings and reviews.
• Builds and works hands-on with AI skills and agents alongside the team, helping shape how AI-native ways of working take root day-to-day through the SDLC.
• Works closely with Product Managers and tech leads to provide guidance and coaching on technical contribution and the product roadmap.
• Provides feedback and helps engineers grow their skills.
• Ensures adherence to development methodologies.
• Standardises core processes (e.g. agile ceremonies, code quality standards) while giving pods real autonomy for effective delivery.
• Owns specific delivery and quality metrics for their pods. Able to show baseline, target, and result, not just a framework.
• Aligns teams to company objectives through transparent, measurable OKRs.
• Proactively tracks engineer well-being, spots burnout, and suggests solutions; reports up to address systemic issues.
• Recognises milestones and individual contributions to build morale and engagement.

What are we looking for?

• Background in world-class product/tech organisations (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Uber, Booking.com) or high-growth startups (e.g. Monzo, N26, Personio), ideally including experience operating in AI first pod-style team structures.
• Demonstrable, evidenced ability building and leading high-calibre engineering teams.
• A genuine change leader, comfortable guiding a team through real ambiguity and transformation, both the AI-driven shift and the organisational change that comes with a quickly accelerating, scaling business.
• Evidenced experience leading engineering teams through AI-assisted or agentic development adoption.
• Comfortable being hands-on with modern AI tooling yourself, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, RAG, or building/configuring agents and skills.
• A track record of owning and improving specific engineering KPIs.
• Genuine appetite to be a pioneer in engineering leadership, excited to help define this way of working, not just adopt existing playbooks.

Competencies

• Understanding Technical Requirements with a Focus on Quality: Translate product requirements into squad plans and capacity, while also having a keen eye for ensuring high coding standards, maintainability, and the prevention of technical debt.
• People Management: Ability to motivate, provide constructive feedback, manage performance, and resolve interpersonal conflicts within a team.
• Agile Expertise: Experience implementing and iterating on Agile processes (like Scrum or Kanban) including task breakdown, estimation, and sprint planning.
• Collaborative and Empathetic: Possesses strong communication skills and builds positive relationships with engineers, focusing on understanding their motivations and work styles.
• Quality Champion: Intrinsically motivated to produce high-quality code and instills a focus on maintainability, testing, and code standards within the team.
• Results-Driven and Process-Oriented: Able to balance adherence to Agile methodologies and delivery timelines with a focus on continuous improvement. Familiar with using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to set measurable goals.
• Passion for Product: You care about WHY we are building product and the value it brings to users and HOW we build product in terms of quality and standards.

Our interview process

Benifex understands the need to have a fast and efficient process, the below will all be completed in the shortest time possible.

• Initial informal call with the Talent team
• Interview with our Engineering Director - 30 min
• Presentation - 60 min
• Final interview with VP of Engineering - 30-45 min

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected. We believe that diversity and inclusion are essential to our success, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are a proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme. If you require any reasonable adjustments at any stage during the recruitment process, please let us know with your application.