Senior Manager, Core Infrastructure Engineering in Bristol

Manages team delivering scalable distributed systems and components on a 2–4 quarter horizon. Standardizes engineering practices and scalability requirements across teams; oversees optimization for high‑throughput, hyper‑scale workloads; and ensures effective use of distributed state tools and data plane platforms. Guides teams to design fault‑tolerant, in‑service‑upgradable systems, set SLO‑aligned durability/availability targets, and implement resiliency mechanisms (load‑shedding, throttling, rate‑limiting). Provides oversight for KPIs, telemetry, and moderately complex dashboards; directs design of functional/correctness requirements, fault‑injection tests, and replication/synchronization strategies. Ensures proactive incident management, operational readiness, and on‑call coverage; drives encryption/access control practices, remediation plans, and compliance documentation. Oversees development and maintenance of automation/IaC and partners with teams on change‑management plans enabling safe patching, updates, and rollbacks.

Key Responsibilities:

• System Design & Architecture – System Scalability: Manages the development and implementation of scalable distributed systems and components across multiple teams, including the effective use of distributed state management tools. Oversees code and/or system optimization efforts for large-scale data processing and high-throughput requirements within and across teams to support hyper-scale systems. Guides teams to define scalability requirements for owned components and ensures design and implementation requirements are met.
• System Design & Architecture – System Reliability Design: Manages the strategy for building fault-tolerant components and systems capable of withstanding in-service updates by guiding the implementation of redundancy, replication, and automatic failover mechanisms. Develops design strategies for systems to effectively handle service disruptions (e.g., network partitions) by prioritising consistency, availability, or partition tolerance.
• Operational Troubleshooting & Incident Management: Guides teams to be proactive when diagnosing, debugging, and resolving issues in active components and systems to support ongoing operation. Ensures teams leverage expertise to prevent interruptions, ensuring no maintenance windows are required for customers and users when resolving issues.
• Compliance & Security: Oversees implementation of robust security measures to protect data and applications in multi-tenant environments, ensuring team strategies incorporate encryption techniques and access controls. Directs execution of remediation plans to address identified security gaps, promoting continuous improvement of security measures.
• Automation & Change Management: Oversees the development and maintenance of automation scripts and tools (e.g., Infrastructure as Code (IaC)) to manage cloud infrastructure. Works with teams to create and adhere to change management plans for patching, updating, and rolling back applications.

Core Responsibilities:

• Planning & Execution: Manages multiple medium- to large-scale projects or initiatives across teams, ensuring timelines, deliverables, and budgets (when applicable) are monitored and met. Provides direction to teams on project work, setting priorities, and aligning with business needs.
• Collaboration & Partnership: Drives cross-functional partnerships to align on expectations and shared objectives across multiple teams. Coaches team members to develop strategic relationships with business leaders, stakeholders, and external partners to foster collaboration and long-term success.
• Problem Solving: Provides direction to multiple teams on addressing complex operational and/or technical issues, as well as guidance on analyzing complex data and/or information to identify solutions.
• Continuous Learning: Models engaging in continuous learning to deepen expertise and stay ahead of industry trends, integrating best practices into strategic planning.
• Continuous Improvement: Drives teams to collaborate on, develop, and implement ideas to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, protocols, and workflows within and across teams, providing oversight.
• Performance and Development: Drives performance across teams by providing feedback and coaching in alignment with performance management processes, guidelines, and expectations.