Engineering Manager (12-month FTC) 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

Top 10 Employer, Sunday Times Best Places to Work Awards and Best Large Tech Company to Work for 2025. Work for a profitable, fast-growing market leader in the online reward and benefits space.

Role Overview

This role is a fixed term contract to cover an upcoming maternity leave and will be aligned to two newly created teams with huge visibility within Benifex. As Engineering Manager in this role you would be aligned to the AI Brain and Admin Experience teams. Our AI Brain product is our first AI native product that draws on all of our unique data and insights gathered from 20 years of being a world leading benefits platform provider and supports Reward Directors with determining what benefits packages are right for their employee populations. The Admin Experience team is a brand new team which is addressing some of the biggest HR Admin pain points, creating a unified admin experience across all of our products - think of a slick interface consuming APIs from multiple products we offer to customers. Both teams are dynamic and fast paced, with the opportunity to have real positive impact on our customer's experiences with us.

Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship and require that you are 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/€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, guides work, estimations and removes blockers. You are the first escalation point.
• Works closely with the Product Manager and Tech Lead to provide guidance and coaching to squad members on technical contributions, product roadmap and other areas.
• Provides feedback and helps engineers grow their skills.
• Ensures adherence to development methodologies.
• Standardise processes (e.g. agile ceremonies, code quality standards), but give squads autonomy for effective delivery.
• Tracks tasks, maintains project velocity, and owns squad-level deliverables against the roadmap.
• Align teams. Regular sync-ups maintain clarity.
• Align on company objectives and measurable outcomes through transparent OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
• Proactively track engineer well‑being, spot burnout, and suggest solutions. Report up to address systemic issues.
• Use metrics to track quality and delivery.
• Encourage retrospective analysis for continuous improvement.
• Recognise milestones and individual contributions to build morale and engagement.

What are we looking for?

• Working in world‑class product / tech organisations, either companies that have reached scale (Google, Microsoft, Uber, Booking.com) or high growth startups (Monzo, N26, Personio).
• Demonstrable ability in building and leading high‑calibre engineering teams.
• Experience leading engineering teams working on Generative AI (Prompt Engineering, Fine Tuning, RAG).

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:

• 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.

Equal Opportunity & Inclusion:

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.