Software Development Manager

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Software Development Manager to join our Technology team here at Penguin. This role is offered on a permanent basis from our office in Embassy Gardens, London.

This is a hands-on leadership role, combining people management with technical direction. You’ll lead and develop our developer community, helping us to turn technical strategy and agreed architecture into consistent engineering standards and reliable delivery.

A key focus of the role will be supporting the modernisation of our integration landscape, moving away from isolated Logic Apps and point-to-point integrations towards reusable .NET services, APIs and event-driven solutions, while ensuring the stability and continuity of our existing live services.

Around 70% of your time will be focused on people leadership, capability building, engineering standards and delivery leadership, with around 30% dedicated to purposeful hands‑on technical contribution. It’s a role for someone who enjoys leading others while staying close enough to the technology to provide credible technical guidance and support.

About the team

The Technology team provides expertise and effective solutions to Penguin Random House. We integrate flexibility and agility which supports our consistent way of working. We set ourselves up for success by holding ourselves accountable and welcoming change. Each member of the Technology team brings skill and initiative to their role; we take personal ownership within a one team culture, working collaboratively to meet expectations from our stakeholders who trust us to deliver.

The role

Key responsibilities:

• Lead, support and develop our permanent software developers across Integration Services, including regular 1:1s, objective setting, development planning, performance management and pastoral support.
• Own recruitment, onboarding, retention and succession planning for the developer community, while ensuring contractors work effectively within agreed team standards and ways of working.
• Build capability against our target architecture and delivery pipeline, identifying skills gaps and creating practical opportunities for learning, coaching and delegated leadership.
• Use your strong C# and .NET expertise to support code and design reviews, pairing, proof‑of‑concepts and complex technical problem‑solving where your input adds the most value.
• Define and maintain engineering standards, development controls and quality gates, including CI/CD, automated testing, secure development, observability and operational readiness.
• Establish responsible standards for AI‑assisted development, covering validation, security, data handling, attribution and human accountability.
• Improve developer tooling, source control, pipelines and work tracking where this strengthens delivery, maintainability and control.
• Lead healthy Agile delivery across the squads, ensuring effective planning, refinement, reviews, retrospectives and day‑to‑day coordination, while coaching others to take on greater delivery leadership as teams mature.
• Support the Head of Integration Services with developer allocation across business‑as‑usual and project work, balancing service continuity, strategic priorities, individual development and sustainable capacity.
• Monitor squad health, capacity, dependencies and delivery risks, providing clear reporting and working with product, programme and engineering stakeholders to resolve constraints.
• Own developer deployment, engineering standards and implementation quality within approved architecture, while working closely with Technical Solution Architects, Senior Developers, Squad Leads, Delivery Managers and Product Owners across their respective areas of responsibility.
• Escalate significant architecture, security, data, commercial or delivery issues to the appropriate accountable owner.

What you’ll bring

• Substantial experience as a senior or lead developer or technical team lead, with evidence of solving production engineering problems.
• Proven line or team leadership, including developer coaching, performance conversations, objective setting and capability growth.
• Deep, current C# and .NET 10+ expertise, including ASP.NET Core and Web API services.
• Strong API and microservice engineering, plus event‑driven delivery with Azure Service Bus, Kafka or an equivalent messaging platform.
• Practical CI/CD, automated testing, Git, secure development and production‑support experience.
• Working knowledge of containers and infrastructure as code, with the judgement to collaborate effectively on platform decisions.
• Azure API Management, Logic Apps, Functions and wider cloud‑native Azure engineering.
• Node.js, Python or TypeScript in a mixed‑language engineering estate.
• Integration or middleware modernisation, especially migration from legacy point‑to‑point solutions.
• GitHub, GitLab and Jira, including practical toolchain or pipeline consolidation.
• AI‑assisted engineering practices and the governance needed for responsible adoption.

Here at Penguin, we believe in the power of authenticity and human creativity. When you apply for a position, we want to encourage you to showcase your unique voice. Throughout our recruitment process, please share your own thoughts, experiences, and skills. This helps us get a true sense of who you are and what you might bring to our team.

We celebrate creativity and diverse perspectives, so please be yourself! While we recognise AI tools can be helpful, we recommend using them thoughtfully to ensure your responses reflect you.

Disability Confident

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt‑in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the ‘What you’ll bring’ section.

There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview. We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable with, for us to support your request.

The salary for this opportunity is c.£100,000 depending on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus a generous bonus scheme and benefits.

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important.

For this role we expect that you will work from our head office in Embassy Gardens, London a minimum of 2 days per week (Tuesday & Thursday) with additional days for team meetings, townhalls etc as required. There may also be occasional travel to our warehouse site in Frating, Colchester.