At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead and inspire a team of senior engineers to deliver cutting-edge AI robotics software.
- Company: Join a dynamic startup revolutionising robotics with innovative AI solutions.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, friendly team culture, and exciting work environment.
- Other info: Vibrant startup energy with opportunities for personal and professional growth.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in robotics while developing your leadership skills.
- Qualifications: Experience managing senior engineers and a strong technical background in robotics or AI.
The predicted salary is between 63000 - 77000 £ per year.
This role is for you if you get real energy from helping and managing a team of engineers to do their best work and ship full stack applied AI software. You will manage a small team of senior, highly technical software engineers, reporting to company leadership. No two days will be the same, but you can expect to:
- Lead, coach and grow a team of senior robotics software engineers
- Own delivery: turn strategy into a clear roadmap, keep the team aligned, and unblock them when things get messy
- Own communication with the hardware, customer success and operations teams, ensuring alignment in each direction
- Stay technical enough to contribute to architecture decisions, set and maintain engineering quality standards, and get into the detail when it matters, without needing to be the one writing every line of code
About the Company: Our client is building robots that can handle the messy, unpredictable and chaotic real world. They believe that by deploying today, they reveal second order effects and edge cases that cannot be seen in the lab or in simulation. Their mission is to become the UK's go to applied AI robotics team, and they will go above and beyond to get there.
What they actually do:
- Build AI models and hardware that let robots work safely alongside humans, lifting, moving and getting stuff done better and faster
- Build, ship and deploy software that runs on real robots in live customer environments, not just in the lab or in simulation
- Spend a lot of time on customer sites, to better understand and solve for the messy chaos of most environments
- Think ten or more years ahead, reimagining manual labour and creating robots that become complementary assistants for labour intensive and physically demanding tasks
They are a small, dynamic team drawn from leading AI research groups and top UK universities, founded by a team with a prior venture acquired by a major technology company.
The Role: You will own day to day leadership, delivery and alignment for the software team, and will be responsible for ensuring the team meets the strategy and goals of company leadership. This is not a stepping stone people management role. The team you will lead is made up of senior, experienced engineers, think PhDs and former founders, working across the entire software stack from computer vision to reinforcement learning. You will need real technical credibility to contribute meaningfully to architecture conversations, but the other half of this job is leadership: internal team alignment, hiring, employee growth, and making sure the team works effectively with the hardware team and the rest of the business. If you see the people side of engineering management as critical to company performance rather than a distraction from real engineering, this role is built for you.
What You Will Do:
- People leadership: Manage, coach and grow a team of senior software engineers, including PhD level specialists in ML and computer vision
- Help engineers manage their time and priorities effectively, set clear goals, and support career development for people who are highly senior in their specialism
- Handle performance conversations, feedback and any team conflicts directly and constructively
- Support hiring: define roles, run interviews, and help bring in more excellent engineers as the team grows
Delivery and alignment:
- Translate the company's technical strategy into a clear, achievable roadmap for the software team
- Run planning, prioritisation and delivery tracking so the team stays focused and unblocked
- Represent the software team, communicating its needs and asks to hardware and relaying hardware's needs and asks back, so both teams stay aligned on dependencies, timelines and trade offs
Technical involvement:
- Stay close enough to the codebase and architecture to ask good questions, spot risk early, and contribute to key technical decisions
- Support the team on the messy, real world integration challenges that come from deploying robots on customer sites
- Help set and maintain engineering standards: code quality, testing, documentation and ways of working
About You: You have managed senior, experienced software engineers before, ideally including specialists with PhDs or deep research backgrounds, and you know how to lead people who often know more about their specialism than you do. You genuinely enjoy the people side of engineering management. Communication, coaching, alignment and conflict resolution are not a tax you pay to get to the technical work, they are a core part of what motivates you. You have a strong technical foundation, ideally with experience in robotics, computer vision, ML or high performance and embedded systems, enough to understand trade offs, ask sharp questions and hold your own in architecture discussions. You are comfortable operating at the interface between disciplines, working closely with hardware teams, product and leadership to keep everyone aligned. You are a clear, proactive communicator, equally able to represent the team's work upward and to translate strategy downward. You are pragmatic and calm under pressure, comfortable with the unpredictability of robots operating in messy, real world environments. You are low ego and collaborative, happy to be the person who unblocks others rather than the one with the loudest technical opinion in the room. You genuinely enjoy working on software that touches real customers in live environments, not just lab or research code. You want to see your work running on the shop floor, not just in a sim.
What Will Impress Us: They love proactive doers who make senior technical people better. Tell them about a team you have built or grown, a hard people situation you navigated well, or how you have helped a group of strong individual contributors work as a genuine team. If you have managed engineers with deep research or PhD backgrounds, tell them what that actually looked like day to day. Be specific, be honest about what was hard, and say why the mission excites you.
Location and Working Pattern: London office, full time, largely on site at four to five days a week. Expect vibrant startup energy with a team that knows when to laugh and when to buckle down. Our client is an equal opportunity employer and encourages individuals from all backgrounds to apply. They offer competitive compensation, a very friendly team, a stimulating work environment and the opportunity to be part of something significant.
Software Engineering Manager employer: Confidential
As a leading employer in the data centre operations sector, we offer an exceptional work environment that prioritises employee growth and development. Our collaborative culture fosters innovation and accountability, while our commitment to safety and operational excellence ensures that you will be part of a team that values your contributions. With opportunities for international travel and the chance to lead critical operations across the EMEA region, this role provides a unique platform for impactful leadership and career advancement.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Software Engineering Manager
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Confidential or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Confidential.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Confidential.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Confidential that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Software Engineering Manager
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Confidential.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Confidential and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Confidential
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Confidential uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
