Software Engineering Manager

This is a consulting role for an ex–Tech Lead or Engineering Manager who can guide enterprise engineering teams, shape architecture, and embed modern AI engineering processes & practices (including agentic coding systems like Claude Code) without writing code themselves, but with the skills to understand what the engineers are doing and to support them through the transition. You’ll be the person who understands how everything works under the hood, even if you’re not the one typing, guiding and influencing the stakeholders to ensure the secure and successful adoption of AI engineering within global corporations.

About the Role: We’re hiring an Engineering Manager (Consulting) to help large organisations modernise their engineering capability and adopt production‑grade AI. You’ll work across multiple enterprise scale clients, shaping architecture, guiding delivery teams, and introducing AI engineering workflows that leverage tools such as Claude Code, PI, and other agentic coding systems. This role is hands‑off in terms of coding, but deeply technical. You’ll be expected to understand how engineers work, how agentic systems interact with codebases, and how modern AI‑augmented development pipelines operate. You won’t be writing code — but you’ll absolutely be under the hood.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead architectural design and technical strategy for AI‑enabled platforms and enterprise systems.
• Introduce AI engineering practices including model lifecycle management, evaluation frameworks, data pipelines, CI/CD for ML, observability, safety and governance.
• Guide teams in adopting agentic coding systems (e.g., Claude Code, PI, MCP-based tools) helping them integrate these into real workflows, repos, and delivery processes.
• Act as a fractional Engineering Manager for client teams; shaping delivery, improving engineering discipline, and unblocking complex technical decisions.
• Review designs, challenge assumptions, and ensure solutions are buildable, scalable and safe.
• Coach engineering squads on modern practices: cloud-native architecture, distributed systems, event-driven patterns, scalable ML deployment.
• Translate ambiguous business goals into clear technical direction, actionable roadmaps and architectural patterns.
• Partner with CTOs, Heads of Engineering, Architecture and programme leadership to raise engineering maturity and accelerate AI adoption.

What You Bring:

• Prior experience as an engineering, progressing to Tech Lead and ideally to Engineering Manager in high‑scale & complex engineering environments.
• Strong architectural capability across cloud-native systems, distributed design, integration patterns and enterprise platforms.
• Practical experience delivering AI/ML systems into production, including MLOps, model evaluation, monitoring and safety considerations.
• Familiarity with agentic coding systems (Claude Code, PI, MCP tools) and the ability to understand how they operate within real engineering environments.
• Ability to get “under the hood” of engineering work; reading code, understanding patterns, diagnosing issues without being hands‑on in implementation.
• A track record of improving engineering culture, delivery practices and technical decision‑making in large organisations.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills and able to simplify complexity and build trust with senior leaders but technical and non‑technical.
• Comfort operating in consulting contexts: ambiguity, multi‑client environments, rapid context switching, and outcome‑driven delivery.

Why This Role Matters:

AI engineering is moving fast and enterprises need leaders who understand both the architectural foundations and the emerging agentic tooling that will reshape how software is built. You’ll help organisations adopt AI safely, effectively and at scale, influencing strategy, delivery, culture and capability across multiple clients.