Software Delivery Manager / Engineering Manager

The company is seeking a Software Delivery Manager/Engineering Manager to join their engineering team in Farnborough, overseeing a group of over 25 engineers focused on aviation products. The role involves ensuring weekly releases, maintaining quality and security standards, and fostering a collaborative team environment. The ideal candidate will possess experience in managing multi-disciplinary teams, Agile methodologies, and customer-led delivery. Responsibilities also include mentoring team members, facilitating communication, and supporting financial reporting. The position offers a competitive salary and benefits, emphasising professional development and a supportive work culture.

Vacancy Name Software Delivery Manager / Engineering Manager
Vacancy No VN1138
Employment Type Full-Time
Division Global Services
Work Location
Job Details
/ Position: Software Delivery Manager / Engineering Manager
/ Location: Farnborough HQ
/ Working Hours: Full-Time, 40 Hours per week
Are you someone who puts team success first, enjoys improving processes, and thrives in a fast-paced engineering environment?
We are looking for a Software Delivery Manager to join our engineering team of over 25 engineers working across a suite of aviation products. We’re keen to locate a truly pragmatic individual, who believes that delivery to the customer and reducing technical debt is key and that process needs to be continuously evaluated and improved. You will be responsible for delivering weekly releases and ensuring the quality and security standards defined by our Secure Development Lifecycle (SDLC) are maintained. In addition, you will ensure our delivery practices align with secure development and open-source licensing requirements.
Our amazing team currently produce product releases on a weekly cycle to meet customer led requirements; alongside the challenges you’d expect in a fast-paced, complex product environment.
The Software Delivery Manager will be known for being highly organised and enjoy tracking the detail of each delivery using Agile techniques (Scrum/Kanban). You will play an active role in the operational leadership of the business, contributing to cross-functional planning and decision making. You will lead continuous improvement initiatives and own delivery metrics that ensure quality and predictability. A key element of this role is being a central focal point for delivery, being a coach, running ceremony meetings and ensuring predictability and quality is met. You will be less concerned about the “what” and more concerned with the “how” and will need to be a highly collaborative communicator.
This role includes some direct line reports, we’d like the SDM to bring their passion and understanding of core line management & leadership principles. Understanding the importance of maintaining a people focus and providing the right level of support to our team. You will be responsible for formal performance reviews, career development planning, and ensuring each team member has clear objectives.
We’d like to hear from applicants with experience working in multi-discipline teams comprised of product owners, architects, software engineers, front end specialists, QA and Dev Ops engineers. Ideally applicants will also have experience within a scale-up environment or similar.
/ About us:
We’re a friendly team of experts, optimists, big-thinkers and problem-solvers. myairops is a leader of SaaS products to the aviation industry with customers across the globe with diverse challenges including corporate flight departments, brokers, medical providers, military and business aviation operators. Solutions are provided through innovative web delivered software and connected mobile applications.
/ More about the role:
As part of this role, you will be responsible for all software engineering processes and accountable for the output and success of each iteration/sprint. You will be keeping track of all progress using the Azure DevOps platform and ensure that team cadence is maintained continually striving to deliver value to our customers. Mentoring and promoting effective team communication and seeking to discover inhibitors, resolving them through utilising the appropriate members of the team.
You will also support financial reporting by classifying engineering effort as R&D or maintenance, and support budgeting activity for the engineering function. By utilising metrics and reports from 7Pace and Azure DevOps, you will track team capacity and delivery trends to then contribute to overall forecasting and planning.
Your role will typically be inward facing to the team but will expect exposure alongside product owners as the projected forecasting of the roadmap will be based on the velocity and achievement of the team that you will be leading.
Familiarity with technologies such as .NET Core, Angular, Swift/iOS, and Azure is helpful for supporting technical conversations, though hands-on coding is not required.
You will be someone comfortable with line management and actively enjoy leading the development of your colleagues.
/ Responsibilities:
Promoting team delivery and team cohesion to ensure we achieve more as a team than as a set of individuals
Understand the strengths and development needs of the team, shaping and advising the training and support of engineering team members to address any gaps
Day to day monitoring of the delivery boards within Azure DevOps and the product backlog items that need to be delivered in the current sprint/iteration
Communicating with all team members to understand inhibitors to progress and the needs of the team to ensure delivery is achieved in accordance with estimates. Maintaining on-time quality deliverables
Driving daily standups and other critical ceremony meetings
Owning or assigning ownership of retro actions
Assist the team when priorities change, adapting the work and highlighting where decisions are required
Liaise with customer focused roles including Solution Consultants and Product Owners to report on expected delivery dates
Work to maintain the business management system and quality management system used by the engineering team
Writing and maintaining process documentation relating to the engineering delivery function
Identifying and removing waste from the process
Perform regular 1-2-1’s with team members, highlighting and supporting development opportunities
Completing required employee appraisals and performance reviews for direct reports
/ Skills, Qualifications and Experience required:
Essential
Proven experience running a development team of over 25 engineers across multiple locations
Experience of fast paced, customer led delivery environment (currently weekly release cycle)
Experience using a delivery management tool such as Azure DevOps or the Atlassian toolset
Knowledge of Scrum and Kanban techniques
Able to demonstrate clear understanding of capacity management and the common challenges encountered in planning & estimating
Ability to lead continuous improvement efforts and report on team delivery metrics
Understanding the psychology of effective and high performing teams
Excellent communication, high emotional intelligence and can help the team communicate and collaborate
Pragmatic, understanding that often the reality differs from the theoretical
Willing to take ownership and accountability of the engineering process
Ability to demonstrate effective and practical change management approaches
Advantageous
Have an interest or direct experience of the aviation/transport industry
Certified Scrum Master or equivalent certification
Azure DevOps/VSTS experience
Software architecture background ideally in cloud deployed software
Knowledge of C# .NET, JavaScript, Angular, Swift iOS and similar technologies as used within our team
/ In addition to a Competitive Salary, we will offer you:
Competitive Group Pension Scheme
Comprehensive Life Assurance *
Comprehensive Income Protection *
Comprehensive Travel Insurance *
Comprehensive Private Healthcare (after successful passing of probation) *
Electric Car Scheme
Free Car Parking
Discounts at popular Retailers
2 Paid Volunteering Days each calendar year (subject to line manager approval)
Investment in Training, Qualifications and Professional Development
*(Subject to insurance underwriting)
Due to the volume of applications received, only candidates selected for interview will be contacted. If you do not hear from us within 20 working days then your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.