Head of Engineering in Brighton

TPR grade & pay group: Grade 4 & Digital

Directorate: Digital, Data & Technology

Contract type: Permanent

Location: Brighton: Hybrid (8 days per month in the office)

The Role And Responsibilities

• Lead and deliver TPR’s software engineering strategy, aligning engineering capabilities, standards and practices with the organisation’s current and future needs.
• Establish and mature a modern engineering function that enables high-quality, secure and resilient digital services, delivered at pace through effective multidisciplinary teams.
• Embed software engineering excellence across TPR by defining and enforcing clear standards, strengthening delivery performance and ensuring consistent, high-quality outcomes across all services and platforms.
• This includes embedding modern software engineering practices, with particular emphasis on improving delivery flow through: Test-Driven Development, DevOps, Automated Testing, Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment, leveraging AI to accelerate delivery with quality “engineered in” from the outset (Shift-left) and strong observability to strengthen feedback and use learning as a driver for continuous improvement.
• Instil a secure by design ethos to enable independent, secure delivery with embedded security practices, architecture and cyber integration.
• Act as the Head of Software Engineering Profession, providing leadership across software, platform, quality, infrastructure and DevOps engineering disciplines, with matrix responsibility for data engineering capability, ensuring alignment across the broader DDaT ecosystem.
• Build and sustain a strong engineering capability, supporting recruitment, development and retention of highly skilled technical professionals.
• Support the delivery of TPR’s transformation by ensuring engineering is a core, integrated component of the operating model—working effectively alongside Digital, Product, Delivery, Architecture, Cyber and Data functions to deliver measurable outcomes for savers, schemes and employers.

The role criteria

• Extensive experience in a senior software engineering leadership role within a complex organisation, with a strong track record of delivering high-quality user centred digital services at scale.
• Strong leadership and influencing skills, with the ability to engage effectively at senior levels.
• Proven experience of defining and implementing engineering strategies and leveraging AI capabilities that improve delivery performance, quality and resilience.
• Strong experience of establishing and enforcing engineering standards and governance across multiple teams.
• Demonstrable experience of leading software engineering capability development and building high-performing teams in Development, Test and DevOps professions.
• Deep technical understanding of modern software engineering approaches, including platform engineering and cloud-native design.
• Excellent presentation and communications skills with responsibility for providing senior technical guidance to project delivery and requires a deep understanding of the modern software engineering discipline.
• Proven experience of defining and delivering Test strategies, including Test-Driven Development and automated testing at scale.
• Extensive experience of “raising the bar” in delivery effectiveness including Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) in an agile, “Path to Live” approach.

The team

Our vision is to use digital, data, and technology to revolutionise pension regulation, making it more efficient, secure, transparent, and customer centred. We believe only our people can change things. In DDaT, we're customer obsessed, whether the customer is a saver, scheme provider, a user in one of our teams or one of our immediate colleagues. We focus on outcomes, are willing to experiment, collaborate and learn with our colleagues. We need brilliant people to help bring our ambitions to life.

TPR Offers

• Genuine opportunities for learning and development.
• Hybrid working and flexible shift patterns.
• A vibrant workplace with employee networks (Disability, Family, LGBT+, Minority Ethnic, Mental Health, Women’s).
• We offer 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, a hybrid working model, 35 hour working week (full-time), flexible working patterns, and flexitime.
• We also provide competitive parental leave, as well as a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%.
• Our dedicated benefits portal (Edenred) offers retail, gym, tech and restaurant discounts, and a cycle to work scheme.

Our culture

TPR strives to be a high-performing organisation, and we prioritise our people's growth and well-being. We offer various learning, secondment and development opportunities, support flexible working, and foster a diverse and inclusive environment.

Equality, diversity and inclusion is very important to us and we strive to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Our modern Brighton offices are in Telecom House overlooking Preston Park, they are over two floors of a shared building facility and when designed in 2023 we followed the government’s workplace design guide to ensure accessibility by design was achieved for our section.

We're proud to have a range of networks and opportunities to bring people together with supportive and safe spaces to connect with one another.

About The Pensions Regulator

With a career at TPR, you’ll be joining an organisation with real purpose and who are proud of their diverse range of skills and experience that positively impact on millions of people. Everyone at TPR plays an important role in helping to keep more than £2trn of savings safe.

Our Corporate Strategy outlines a bold and challenging vision of how pensions regulation should continue to evolve to keep pace with a change in the scale and nature of the pensions landscape. We believe diversity and inclusion are vital to good decision-making for positive saver outcomes. We’re committed to creating a supportive, inclusive, and dynamic work environment where everyone can thrive; understanding the link between the work we do and its positive impact on society.

Selection and interview

If you are shortlisted for interview, we’ll be in contact with you shortly after the closing date. We aim to respond to every application however due to the large volume of applications this is not always possible. If you have not heard from us within 21 days of submitting your application, please assume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we’re committed to the recruitment, employment, retention, and development of people with disabilities, and to improving their employment opportunities. Candidates who declare that they have a disability and who meet the essential criteria will be an offered an interview. Please note that if we receive a high volume of Disability Confident applicants, we reserve the right to offer an interview to those who best meet the essential criteria.

Diversity and inclusion

TPR is committed to promoting diversity, inclusion and equality in the workplace, creating an environment where everyone is encouraged to be themselves, enabling our people to feel supported, represented and do their best work.

We encourage applicants from all backgrounds and with different identities and experiences to apply for roles with TPR.

Further information

Please visit our website to find out what it is like to work at TPR, our culture, interview process and our commitment to our employees.

If you have any queries about this role, or if you have a disability and wish to request a reasonable adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process, please email recruitmentteam@tpr.gov.uk.