At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead and scale global engineering, define technical strategy, and ensure product quality.
- Company: Join a visionary tech company focused on innovation and excellence.
- Benefits: Enjoy 25 days annual leave, competitive salary, and remote work flexibility.
- Other info: Be part of a collaborative culture that values innovation and personal growth.
- Why this job: Make a significant impact in a dynamic environment with cutting-edge technology.
- Qualifications: 12+ years in software engineering leadership, with strong strategic and technical skills.
The predicted salary is between 120000 - 150000 £ per year.
We are seeking a visionary, inspirational Senior Vice President of Engineering to lead and scale our global engineering function. They will be responsible for defining our multi-year technical strategy, leading the organization at an executive level, and ensuring the quality, performance, and resilience of our Java open-source based in-memory Real-Time Data Platform.
This role requires an executive leader who is a strategic business partner to the C-suite, a champion of engineering excellence, and a driver of enterprise-wide innovation who can balance long-term technical vision with predictable, world-class execution.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Executive Technical Strategy & Product Delivery
- Executive Technical Vision: Define and champion a multi-year technology strategy and architectural vision that anticipates market trends and directly aligns with the company’s long-term business objectives and revenue growth.
- Product Strategy & Roadmap Co-Ownership: Collaborate at the executive level with Product Management to define, prioritize, and drive the technical direction of the product roadmap, ensuring engineering input enhances technical execution, architectural quality, commercial value, differentiated packaging, and timely delivery.
- Strategic Execution & Delivery: Drive, own, and manage end-to-end engineering delivery against the product roadmap, utilizing agile methodologies to ensure rapid, predictable, and high-quality releases at an enterprise scale.
- Quality & Resilience: Maintain and continuously elevate world-class standards for system quality, performance, security, and resilience across the entire platform, ensuring enterprise-grade reliability for our largest customers.
- Innovation & Future-Proofing: Provide executive oversight for core technical domains (distributed systems, high-performance Java, concurrency, streaming, data structures) while aggressively evaluating and integrating emerging technologies to maintain a competitive market edge.
- Resource & Investment Optimisation: Manage the engineering budget, drive ROI on technology investments, and optimize resource allocation to ensure maximum business impact and operational efficiency.
- Open Source Software Leadership
- Open Source Stewardship: Steward Hazelcast’s open-source core with a strong commitment to transparency, stability, and long-term compatibility, ensuring community trust while advancing enterprise capabilities.
- Open Source/Commercial Balance: Balance the needs of commercial customers with the expectations of a global, user-led open-source community, making principled, strategic decisions about feature placement, deprecations, and roadmap visibility.
- Industry Thought Leadership: Serve as a prominent voice and advocate for the company within the broader open-source and real-time data ecosystems, influencing industry standards and building strategic technological partnerships.
- Community Feedback: Convert high-volume user feedback from diverse production environments into clear engineering priorities, ensuring the OSS platform remains robust, predictable, and widely adoptable.
- Ecosystem: Maintain disciplined reliability across Hazelcast’s multi-language client ecosystem and seamless upgrades for all users.
- Superior Developer and Operator Experience: Champion exceptional developer and operator experience, driving documentation quality, release clarity, and community engagement to strengthen Hazelcast’s ecosystem.
- Organisational Development & Leadership
- Global Executive Leadership: Lead, motivate, and manage a highly distributed, global engineering team, fostering a people-centric managerial approach and an aggressive, collaborative engineering culture.
- Culture & Ethos: Instill a strong product-led, innovation-led ethos within the department, guiding engineering teams to build and develop the product as a customer acquisition and value-delivery tool.
- Organizational Design & Scaling: Evolve and optimize the organisational structure for maximum performance, resilience, scalability, and ownership to support the company's next phase of growth.
- Talent Acquisition & Leadership Development: Lead global headcount planning to ensure a right-sized, highly skilled, and diverse engineering organisation. Build a robust leadership bench and succession plan for critical technical and managerial roles.
- Managerial Development: Identify, coach, mentor, and develop engineering directors and managers within the organisation, creating clear career paths for both technical and managerial career tracks.
- Performance Management: Ensure teams are empowered and aligned with company goals, providing frequent, actionable, and constructive feedback to support personal development and measure team outcomes.
- Go-To-Market and External Partnership
- Executive Collaboration: Partner closely with the CEO, and other C-level executives to report on engineering performance, technological risks, and strategic opportunities.
- Executive Client Sponsorship: Serve as an executive sponsor for key enterprise accounts. Partner with Sales to engage in high-stakes C-level prospect meetings, acting as the ultimate technical authority for the company.
- Developer Relations: Inspire and engage advanced developers globally, encouraging contributions to our open-source projects and fostering a vibrant technical community.
WHAT YOU HAVE
- Executive Leadership: 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in software engineering, with at least 7+ years operating at the VP, SVP, or CTO level, preferably in a B2B enterprise software or platform company.
- Business & Strategic Acumen: Proven ability to manage large departmental budgets, optimize engineering spend, and translate complex technical decisions into clear business value for executive-level stakeholders.
- Distributed Systems Expertise: Deep understanding of complex architectures, concurrent, distributed systems, high-performance compute, and real-time data architectures.
- Open Source Software Expertise: Excel at balancing open-source community expectations with enterprise requirements, maintaining rigorous public API discipline, documentation standards, and governance practices.
- Global Team Management: Proven track record of successfully scaling and leading a geographically distributed, international engineering organisation of significant size.
- Technical Depth: A strong foundation in the core technologies relevant to the Hazelcast platform including Java, concurrency, networking, data streaming, SQL, distributed data stores, data grids.
- Agile and Delivery: Expertise in modern agile methodologies and continuous delivery pipelines, focused on delivering product capabilities rapidly, reliably, and at scale.
- Customer-Centric/Team Aligner: Comfortable working backward from the customer and working in an “open-kitchen,” GTM aligned environment.
Desired Characteristics
- Strategic Visionary & Entrepreneurial Spirit: The ability to look ahead to anticipate technological shifts, while approaching the engineering function with the agility of a startup to constantly innovate and improve.
- Executive Communication: Exceptional verbal, written, and presentation skills, capable of communicating complex technical strategy to both internal teams (engineering, product) and external stakeholders (C-level customers, analysts, board).
- Influence: Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries, driving alignment between Product, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing at the highest levels.
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline (Master’s or equivalent advanced degree preferred).
BENEFITS 25 days Annual Leave +
SVP, Engineering in London employer: Hazelcast
At Hazelcast, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer that fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration. Our remote work environment in the UK allows for flexibility while providing ample opportunities for professional growth and development within a diverse global engineering team. With a strong commitment to open-source stewardship and a focus on engineering excellence, we empower our employees to drive meaningful impact and contribute to cutting-edge technology solutions.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land SVP, Engineering in London
✨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 Hazelcast 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 Hazelcast.
✨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 Hazelcast.
✨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 Hazelcast 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 SVP, Engineering in London
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 Hazelcast.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Hazelcast 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 Hazelcast
✨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 Hazelcast 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.
