Development Manager Development Manager

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced technology leader who is passionate about building high-performing teams and ensuring critical software and data services remain secure, resilient, and fit for purpose. Working across a complex operational environment, you will play a key role in leading developers and data engineers while providing technical and operational assurance for live services. The role is predominantly focused on business-as-usual service stability, support, and continuous improvement, with a smaller proportion of time dedicated to targeted development and data engineering activity that supports phased business transition.,

• Lead and line manage a team of Developers and Data Engineers, providing clear objectives, coaching, performance management, and development support.
• Foster a collaborative, accountable, and inclusive team culture that encourages pragmatic improvement and continuous learning.
• Oversee the day-to-day operation of live software applications and data services, ensuring incidents, defects, maintenance activity, and minor enhancements are prioritised and resolved effectively.
• Provide technical leadership across live services, ensuring appropriate monitoring, alerting, logging, documentation, and operational runbooks are in place.
• Act as an escalation point for service incidents and recurring problems, coordinating root cause analysis, corrective actions, and stakeholder communication.
• Ensure robust incident, problem, change, release, patching, testing, and documentation practices are embedded across the team.
• Drive service reliability through preventative maintenance, automation, and prioritised reduction of technical debt.
• Deliver controlled, time-bound changes to support business transition activity, including data extracts, configuration updates, and workflow amendments.
• Support the safe reduction or retirement of functionality where required, ensuring risks, dependencies, and service impacts are understood and managed.

Stakeholder & operational leadership

• Maintain a prioritised operational backlog balancing incidents, technical debt, risk, and small change demand.
• Contribute to service lifecycle planning, resilience planning, and operational roadmaps.
• Provide clear reporting on service performance, incidents, risks, dependencies, and capacity.
• Help shape support models and operational improvements that enhance stability and supportability.

Governance, risk & quality

• Embed secure-by-design and privacy-by-design principles into service support and change activity.
• Ensure vulnerabilities are addressed through patching, remediation planning, and controlled releases.
• Proactively manage operational risks relating to availability, resilience, suppliers, and disaster recovery.
• Identify and deliver service improvements based on incident trends, operational metrics, problem management, and lessons learned.

We are looking for a technically credible and people-focused leader who can balance operational delivery with team development.

• Degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent practical experience.
• Significant experience in software engineering and live service support and maintenance.
• Experience supporting data extracts or pipelines in a production environment.
• Proven line management experience for developers and/or data engineers, including coaching, performance management, and capability development.
• Strong understanding of operating, supporting, and monitoring software and data services.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms, integration technologies, and data platforms.
• Strong Agile and DevOps knowledge, with sufficient data engineering expertise to support existing pipelines and transition extracts.
• Hands-on experience across enterprise technology stacks such as C#/.NET, Java, JavaScript, Python, cloud technologies, and microservices.
• Ability to translate business requirements into clear technical outcomes and delivery plans.
• Excellent communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving, prioritisation, and decision-making skills.

Desirable

• Experience of ITIL-aligned incident, problem, and change management practices.
• Experience contributing to operational roadmaps, service lifecycle planning, or transition programmes., A calm and pragmatic approach to operational leadership.
• Strong technical judgement and attention to detail.
• The ability to support and develop others through coaching and constructive feedback.
• A collaborative mindset and confidence working across multiple teams and dependencies.
• A focus on service quality, resilience, security, and continuous improvement.