Senior Engineering Manager in Leeds

About Waystone

Waystone is a leading asset-servicing solutions provider of institutional governance, administration, risk and compliance services to financial institutions.

With over 25 years’ experience and a comprehensive range of specialist services to its name, Waystone helps our clients structure, operate and grow through our expertise, innovation and digitisation, backed by the operational scale to support global expansion

SUMMARY

Reporting to the Director of Architecture, Engineering and AI, the Senior Engineering Manager will be vital to the success of the architecture, engineering and AI pillar.

The role owns and runs the software factory: the engineering capability that takes defined solutions and turns them into production-ready, assured software.

Upstream functions own the what and the why, shaping opportunities and defining solutions to the point they can be handed over; this role owns everything from that handover to a production-ready package: building the agreed design, testing and assuring it, and the standards and capacity that make delivery predictable.

The Senior Engineering Manager is the named receiving owner for work entering the factory and the accountable leader for engineering throughput, quality and standards across the function.

The factory serves two channels of demand: enterprise change, providing the build capability that enterprise change workstreams draw on, and a managed business-as-usual channel spanning small change, defects and maintenance.

The role also owns the engineering toolchain on which the factory runs, from source control through to the production-ready package.

A core focus of the role is building a high-performance engineering culture, embedding AI-first and automation-first ways of working into the factory, and doing so within the control standards expected of a regulated financial services environment.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the build lifecycle, taking qualified, defined initiatives and converting them through development and testing into an assured, production-ready package on a predictable cadence, handed over cleanly for verification and release.
• Own engineering capacity, sequencing and throughput, ensuring the function has the capability and headroom to deliver the committed roadmap.
• Provide the technical leadership and delivery capacity that enables delivery leads and project managers to get initiatives out of the door, bringing technical strength to the delivery workstreams and translating outcome intent into deliverable engineering work.
• Serve the enterprise change portfolio, providing the build capability that enterprise change workstreams draw on, and work in close partnership with the Head of Enterprise Change and delivery leads to ensure each workstream has the right engineering resource at the right time.
• Own the business-as-usual demand channel alongside enterprise change, running a managed intake across its three sources: small change, defects and maintenance.
• Deliver small change: requests that fall below the agreed enterprise change threshold, handled through a proportionate but controlled route so smaller demands move quickly without escaping governance.
• Own defect intake and triage, applying rigour at the point of entry so that reported defects are validated as genuine, and new requirements arriving under the guise of a failure are identified and routed to the appropriate demand channel.
• Own the maintenance workload: internally driven improvement and the engineering response to emerging obligations, such as framework deprecation or an identified package vulnerability, keeping the estate current, supportable and secure.
• Apply the solution archetypes and patterns set by architecture, working with the architecture practice to keep them practical and current, and feed real-world build experience back into architecture.
• Accept that technology and design decisions are owned by architecture and recorded through the Technology Reference Architecture, while owning how they are realised in build.
• Define, create and enforce engineering execution standards: coding standards, engineering practice and ways of working.
• Drive commonality across product lines through shared patterns, practices, processes and naming conventions, on the principle that convention outweighs configuration and bespoke work.
• Ensure work is traceable to agreed architecture and recorded through the appropriate decision artefacts, including Architecture Decision Records where a decision is made.
• Own engineering quality end to end, including review, test strategy, quality gates and assurance across the factory, ensuring standards are not only defined but met, with quality built in rather than inspected after the fact.
• Maintain the evidence and attestation expected of a regulated environment, so delivered software is demonstrably fit and controlled.
• Realise solutions on the firm's agreed platforms and technologies, implementing against the Technology Reference Architecture, and ensure any new technology, product or vendor entering the estate does so via the TRA with a documented justification, in service of a lean, well-governed technology suite.
• Own the engineering toolchain on which the factory runs, including source control, continuous integration, package management and code quality and scanning capability, ensuring it is fit for purpose, well governed and continuously improved.
• Recognise that the factory’s accountability ends at the production-ready package: deployment and environment management are owned by the platform team, and the role works in close partnership with that team to ensure a clean, well-defined handover from factory to platform.
• Contribute to environment strategy as an integral part of how software is built, recognising that the platform team own and operate the underlying infrastructure.
• Manage delivery-partner and build-capacity vendors, holding them to the same standards, throughput and quality expectations as the internal factory.
• Embed AI-first and automation-first ways of working into engineering, using them to raise throughput and quality without compromising control.
• Ensure engineers are skilled, equipped and supported with the right tools, training and opportunities to deliver high-quality outcomes, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
• Promote internal flexibility and reduce over-specialisation through knowledge sharing, cross-training and adaptable team structures.
• Build strong working relationships across architecture, engineering, assurance, design, platform and delivery.

REQUIREMENTS

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Deep technical credibility across modern software engineering and delivery practice, with the standing to lead engineers and set the bar.
• A strong grasp of engineering standards, patterns and ways of working, and of how to apply an architecture practice's archetypes in build.
• Fluency in modern delivery practice, including version control, CI/CD, automated testing, quality gates and a disciplined approach to code review.
• A working understanding of AI-first and automation-first engineering, and how to embed it without compromising control.
• The ability to bring technical leadership to delivery workstreams and translate outcome intent into deliverable engineering work.
• Sound judgement on delivering within a regulated or otherwise control-heavy environment, including the evidence and attestation that demands.
• An analytical, data-driven approach to throughput, quality and performance management.
• Clear communication across technical and non-technical audiences, and a collaborative, pragmatic and outcomes-focused approach.

EXPERIENCE

• A proven track record of leading software engineering teams and delivering production software on a predictable cadence.
• Experience running an engineering function serving multiple demand channels, balancing project-driven change against business-as-usual work spanning small change, defects and maintenance.
• Demonstrable experience defining and enforcing engineering standards and raising quality across a function.
• Experience managing delivery-partner or build-capacity vendors to internal standards of throughput and quality.
• Experience operating within an architecture-governed environment, realising solutions against a reference architecture.
• Experience introducing modern engineering practices, ideally including AI-assisted engineering, into an established team.

EDUCATION

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience