Engineering Manager in Bristol

Canada Life UK has helped individuals, families and businesses secure their financial futures for over 120 years. Today, we are transforming our technology, culture and ways of working to become a more modern, customer centric and engineering led organisation. As we modernise our IT estate and shift toward cloud, SaaS/PaaS and product centric delivery, we’re investing heavily in engineering excellence, empowered teams and great leadership.

We’re now looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Home Finance product engineering team—a group responsible for the systems that power our mortgage origination and servicing capabilities.

Why join us?

• Shape the future of Home Finance – You’ll lead the evolution of our bespoke Ruby on Rails‑based mortgage origination and servicing platform, architecting modern, resilient and scalable solutions.
• True empowerment and autonomy – We operate stream‑aligned product teams where Engineering Managers have real authority over technology decisions, people development, engineering standards and team culture.
• Modern engineering focus – You’ll drive cloud adoption, DevSecOps, automation, data‑driven decision making and continuous improvement across the lifecycle.
• A culture that values people – We’re building a place where engineers can do their best work – curious, collaborative, inclusive, and always improving.

The role

Reporting to the Head of Product Engineering, you will lead a multidisciplinary engineering team responsible for the Home Finance application stack. You’ll act as a servant leader and coach, improving engineering practices, nurturing talent and enabling the team to deliver high‑quality outcomes that support our customers and regulatory obligations. This is a hands‑on leadership role where you’ll influence architecture, delivery, operational excellence and culture across the product. You’ll work closely with Product Owners, Engineering Managers and operational teams to optimise flow, deliver customer value and modernise our platforms. Our bespoke mortgage system is built using Ruby on Rails, MySQL, JavaScript, and other open‑source technologies, with a clear roadmap toward cloud‑native evolution.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, coach and inspire a stream‑aligned product engineering team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, psychological safety and high performance.
• Drive adoption of agile, DevSecOps and modern engineering practices, optimising the flow of change and reducing time‑to‑value.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally to deliver secure, stable and scalable solutions that support Home Finance operations and customer outcomes.
• Ensure regulatory compliance (including FCA MCOB) and operational excellence across the platform.
• Shape the technology roadmap, contributing to architectural decisions and cloud migration strategies.
• Manage operational risk, security posture, monitoring, alerting and incident response for Home Finance systems.
• Use data and insights to guide prioritisation, engineering improvements and product decisions.
• Support talent development, succession planning and recruitment to build a high‑performing engineering capability.
• Manage budgets responsibly, improving cost efficiency and value delivery.
• Define and track team and departmental OKRs, ensuring alignment with Canada Life’s strategy.
• Build strong relationships with third‑party suppliers to maximise value and service quality.

About you

Technical expertise

• Strong understanding of mortgage origination/administration systems or comparable regulated financial platforms.
• Experience delivering and operating web‑based MVC applications (e.g., Ruby on Rails, React) and APIs.
• Skilled in designing, managing and optimising relational SQL databases.
• Hands‑on knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure or GCP) and cloud‑native architectures.
• Broad engineering experience across DevSecOps, automation, CI/CD, infrastructure, monitoring and security best practice (“shift‑left”).
• Proven track record of running critical production services with a focus on stability, performance and security.

Leadership & delivery

• A people‑first engineering leader who builds high‑performing, motivated and curious teams.
• Confident working with OKRs and outcome‑driven delivery.
• Able to communicate complex technical ideas simply and persuasively.
• Skilled at navigating ambiguity, prioritising effectively and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Collaborative, pragmatic and adept at building trust across product, engineering and operational teams.

What you’ll bring

• A degree or equivalent professional experience.
• A passion for modern, inclusive engineering leadership and the ability to inspire and develop others.

Benefits of working at Canada Life

We believe in recognising and rewarding our people, so we offer a competitive salary and benefits package that’s regularly reviewed. As a Canada Life UK colleague, you’ll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive reward package including a generous pension and bonus scheme, along with income protection, private medical insurance and life assurance. We have a fantastic number of other benefits and support services as well as regular personal and professional development.

How we work at Canada Life

Our culture is unique and incredibly important to us. We care about doing the right thing for our people, customers and community and helping others to build better futures. Our blueprint behaviours shape and influence how we work, and are central to the relationships we have with others. Every day we are encouraged to be more curious, own the outcome, face into things together and find a way forward. We want colleagues to have rewarding careers with us so we invest in the development of our people, technology and workplaces. That’s why we offer a range of training, flexible working and opportunities to grow and develop.

Diversity and inclusion

Building an inclusive workplace with a diverse workforce where everyone can feel they belong and achieve their potential regardless of gender, ethnicity or any other characteristic is a key commitment for us. We are proud of the progress we’re making in DEI, and we continue to focus on it.

“At Canada Life we believe in the power of great people from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives coming together to build better futures. Emerging talent is crucial to our growth and creating an environment that continues to inspire us all.” – Nick Harding, Chief People Officer, Canada Life UK

We appreciate that everyone has different work and life responsibilities. We’re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements, including part time, for any of our roles should this be a requirement for you.