Engineering Manager in Cardiff

Location: Cardiff

Hybrid/flexible working

Salary: Competitive salary plus a discretionary bonus

What you’ll do

We're looking for a forward-thinking Engineering Manager to lead our Core team. The team owns systems at the heart of our business: Oracle platforms, Java services, and the customer-facing portals that serve millions of customers, together managing billions in value across Europe. You'll be accountable for the delivery outcomes of the team, as well as the people within it.

This isn't a hands-on coding role. Instead, you'll own what good looks like: setting the engineering standards, shaping the process, and overseeing the test strategy that gives us confidence in every release. You'll challenge how things are done today and drive the improvements that help the team deliver at pace without compromising on quality, reliability, or security.

This is a platform in motion. Some of our systems are moving to Oracle APEX, and we're adopting agentic development practices across the team. You'll lead that change: bringing engineers with you, maturing how the team works, and increasing what we deliver.

You'll balance people leadership, change leadership, and delivery oversight, working closely with technical leads, product, and business stakeholders. You'll build a high-performing, inclusive team where engineers can do their best work, and play a key role in shaping how our core engineering operates as we grow.

Key Responsibilities

These may change with the needs of the business, but the main areas are:

Modernisation & Ways of Working

• Lead the team's adoption of agentic development: set clear expectations for how AI-assisted tools are used safely and well, and measure the impact on output and quality
• Partner with technical leads on engineering strategy, including the move of selected systems to Oracle APEX; ensure technical direction aligns with business goals and organisational capacity
• Identify and remove engineering delivery blockers (process, tooling, architecture, or cross-team dependencies) that impede the team
• Advocate credibly for technical investment (infrastructure, debt, tooling) with product and business stakeholders using business language

Delivery & Execution

• Own and grow the delivery output of the team; accountable for commitments made to product and business stakeholders across all active work
• Remove blockers, resolve cross-team conflicts, and escalations appropriately so the team is never blocked waiting for a manager decision
• Manage hiring, onboarding, capacity planning, and resourcing to maintain team delivery capability through growth and attrition
• Produce accurate team-level reporting and status updates; proactively communicate when delivery is at risk with proposed mitigations

People Management

• Own performance, development, and retention of direct reports; conduct regular, high-quality 1:1s and structured annual reviews
• Manage performance issues early, fairly, and with clear documentation; able to have difficult conversations and follow through consistently
• Hire deliberately against the team's capability gaps; build high-performing, diverse teams with a clear bar for craft and culture
• Create the conditions for engineers to do their best work: clear goals, psychological safety, growth opportunities, and recognition

Communication

• Communicate team goals, performance, and delivery status clearly and proactively to senior leadership and business stakeholders
• Manage upward effectively. Advocate for the team, flag risks early, and align expectations between engineering and business
• Navigate organisational complexity; build relationships across departments to reduce friction and create opportunities for the team
• Represent the engineering team at the right level of detail for each audience from sprint review to executive reporting

What you’ll bring

Essential

• Proven experience leading and growing engineering teams, including managing performance and developing people
• A track record of improving team delivery and output in a measurable way
• Experience introducing new ways of working and bringing a team along with you
• Confident communicating with senior leadership and business stakeholders
• Strong technical foundations from a software engineering background: you no longer write production code, but you can read it, challenge a design, and judge the quality of what the team ships

Desirable

• Experience with AI-assisted or agentic development practices
• Exposure to Oracle, Java, or customer-facing web platforms at scale
• Experience leading teams through a platform migration or modernisation
• Background in financial services or another regulated environment

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