Head of Research and Development (Kobas UK)

Kobas provides Software-as-a-Service to the hospitality industry, transforming operational routines from dull, spreadsheet-based grind to quick, point-and-click management, across our core product pillars: In-Venue, Operations, Customers, Teams and Insights. Our software helps food and beverage businesses process millions of pounds of sales each year. We unite with our clients so that they can benefit from our complete hospitality system, as well as ensuring that best practices can be followed, sharing knowledge amongst our clients, providing insight, and achieving maximum ROI.

Mission Statement
To make it simple to provide great hospitality.

Vision
To be the hospitality platform that brings everything and everyone under the same roof.

The Head of Research & Development (R&D) reports to the General Manager and is responsible for leading the engineering function, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, scalable and reliable software, and leading transformation of delivery processes, ways of working and team performance across the department. This role combines leadership, delivery ownership, and strategic oversight. The Head of R&D will define and oversee the technical direction of the Kobas platform, ensuring engineering practices, tools and processes are aligned with business goals, risk controls and delivery efficiency.

Job Responsibilities

• Team Management
  • Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing engineering team, dedicated to continuous improvement.
  • Create a collaborative, focused environment aligned to business priorities.
  • Promote a culture of ownership and accountability for quality across the engineering team.
  • Ensure team members understand business strategy, product direction and their role in delivering it.
  • Manage performance and change, supporting individuals to unlock potential.
• Technical Leadership & Strategy
  • Oversee technical direction, ensuring alignment with business and product strategy.
  • Provide guidance and technical authority to make informed decisions across complexity and risk levels.
  • Ensure appropriate standards, architecture and practices are in place across the team.
  • Oversee and guide the quality, scalability and reliability of the Kobas platform.
  • Maintain awareness of industry and competitor trends to inform technical decisions.
• Delivery & Workload Management
  • Own the development workflow and lifecycle, ensuring predictable and efficient output and clear communication of timelines to wider team.
  • Manage workload distribution across the team, balancing feature development, bug fixing and maintenance including technical debt.
  • Oversee and support the triage process, ensuring cards are clearly defined, prioritised and actionable in collaboration with the Product Manager.
  • Establish and enforce clear expectations around turnaround times, ownership and accountability.
  • Work closely with Product Manager and senior leadership team to align delivery with business priorities.
• Process & Performance Optimisation
  • Lead evaluation and redesign of processes to improve delivery speed, quality and team efficiency.
  • Implement and maintain effective development practices including testing, code quality and design standards.
  • Establish clear performance metrics and ensure visibility across the team and wider business.
  • Ensure governance, risk management and operational resilience across systems.
  • Identify bottlenecks and implement structural solutions.
• AI-SDLC Adoption & Transformation
  • Own and deliver the adoption of an AI-enabled Software Development Lifecycle (AI-SDLC), embedding AI into end-to-end product delivery.
  • Define, implement and evolve how AI is used across the team and the AI-SDLC model.
  • Identify, introduce and improve AI tools across the development lifecycle.
  • Support and enable the team and the wider business to adopt AI confidently through training, guidance and shared best practices.
  • Define and track AI-SDLC success measures.
• QA and Quality Ownership
  • Own the overall QA strategy and approach, including evaluation and implementation of automated testing.
  • Ensure quality is embedded within development processes and clearly owned across the team.
  • Assess the need for dedicated QA resource based on performance and delivery outcomes.
• Financial & Commercial Responsibility
  • Manage departmental budget and contribute to efficiency ratio targets.
  • Make informed trade-offs between cost, speed and quality.
  • Contribute to business case development and technical planning.
• Hands-On Contribution
  • Maintain sufficient technical understanding to support decision-making, challenge assumptions and guide the team.
  • Provide oversight and support on complex technical issues where required.

Job Qualifications

• Strong understanding of software development principles, architecture and engineering practices.
• Experience working closely with engineering teams in a technical environment.
• An understanding of principles within PHP, SQL, MVC frameworks, React, AngularJS, AWS, APIs, Linux environments and version control.
• Experience working with legacy systems and modernising architecture.
• Strong understanding of Agile development and delivery practices.
• Experience implementing automated testing and development tooling.
• Experience leading cross-functional transformation programmes.

Personal Characteristics

• Strategic but hands-on, able to move between high-level planning and detailed execution.
• Strong technical credibility with the ability to challenge and guide engineers.
• Commercially aware, and able to balance strategic thinking with practical delivery focus.
• Positive, ambitious, with a can-do attitude.
• Influential and able to build trust across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Confident in managing complex team dynamics and addressing underperformance.