Head of Insurance Platform and Product Engineering

Job Description:

Head of Insurance Platform and Product Engineering

London, Staines or Manchester (Hybrid)

Permanent

We make health happen

At Bupa, our purpose is simple: helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives — and making a better world. In UK Insurance, that means building digital experiences that are reliable, fast and easy to use, so customers can get the cover and care they need without friction.

As Head of Insurance Platform and Product Engineering, you’ll lead the transformation of our UK Insurance platform — moving from a legacy three‑tier monolith to a modern, cloud‑native architecture on Azure and GCP. In practice, that means reshaping the platform into headless, API‑first services that are simpler to change and scale, improving deployment frequency and service reliability.

You’ll also build and grow in‑house engineering capability across the UK and India (c. 100–110 FTE) to reduce outsourcing and accelerate delivery — all while keeping our current platform stable during the transition.

Key Responsibilities

• Set the technical vision for the UK Insurance platform within the first three months and lead a multi‑year rebuild and modernisation.
• Establish platform teams and agile product ways of working, define and deliver platform and product roadmaps, and ensure operational excellence.
• Build high‑performing engineering teams (UK and India), hiring six senior Engineering Managers and creating a strong coaching culture; more than 50% of your time will focus on staffing and development.
• Improve delivery flow by implementing CI/CD and trunk‑based development to reach weekly deployments and ~2‑week lead times.
• Champion test automation to replace manual testing roles and raise quality.
• Introduce observability and reliability engineering (clear SLOs/SLIs) to cut incident volume and severity, and improve perceived performance.
• Product management of the platform — own strategy, delivery and support; keep the customer at the centre and make data‑informed decisions.
• Manage the transition — ring‑fence and sunset the legacy platform with the right commercial structures, while maintaining service continuity.

What We’re Looking For

• Degree in Computer Science, IT or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Seasoned engineering leader with experience managing managers and multiple teams (30+ FTE), plus a strong track record as a senior engineer/architect.
• Hands‑on credibility: comfortable “rolling up your sleeves” when needed, without becoming a bottleneck.
• Proven delivery of modern software engineering practices (CI/CD, trunk‑based development, test automation, observable systems).
• Cloud experience (Azure, GCP or AWS).
• Inclusive leadership with a focus on hiring, coaching and developing diverse teams; outcome‑focused, proactive, and trusted.
• Clear, jargon‑free communication; able to explain complex ideas simply to technical and non‑technical audiences.

Benefits

Our benefits are designed to make health happen for our people. Viva is our global wellbeing programme and includes all aspects of our health – from mental and physical, to financial, social and environmental wellbeing. We support flexible working and have a range of family friendly benefits.

Joining Bupa in this role you will receive the following benefits and more:

• 25 days holiday, increasing through length of service, with option to buy or sell
• Enhanced pension and life insurance
• Private medical insurance
• Access to our health and wellbeing services
• Discounts on Bupa products and services

Why Bupa

We’re a health insurer and provider. With no shareholders, our customers are our focus. Our people are all driven by the same purpose – helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives and making a better world. We make health happen by being brave, caring and responsible in everything we do.

We encourage all of our people to “Be you at Bupa”, we champion diversity, and we understand the importance of our people representing the communities and customers we serve. That’s why we especially encourage applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Bupa is a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer. This means we aim to offer an interview/assessment to every disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for the role. We’ll make sure you are treated fairly and offer reasonable adjustments as part of our recruitment process to anyone that needs them.

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