Senior II Engineer

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.

At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Together, we help audiences stay better informed and deepen their understanding of the world around them.

Our Product & Tech teams drive us forward in an ever-evolving digital landscape, delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers daily. Our growth relies on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists.

With a supportive culture, entrepreneurial spirit and opportunities at every turn, there are no limits to where your FT career can take you.

Build a newsworthy career at the FT.

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

About you: 

Your core skill set and expertise is in the site reliability area and you’re enthusiastic about contributing to all parts of the process. You are also an experienced people leader, comfortable managing both engineers and managers, and motivated by helping others grow. Our ideal candidate will bring a unique point of view to the work that we do. We firmly believe that diverse perspectives help us create a great product and enhance the team

About the team: 

The Cloud Services team includes our cloud infrastructure, pre- and post-deployment services, as well as providing insights into our technology stack, helping leaders make informed decisions. We are a set of multi-disciplinary teams primarily based in London. We value transparency, accountability, shared responsibility and teamwork. We’re focused on our users and the FT’s mission to provide engaging, world-class journalism.

What you’ll work on: 

As a Senior Engineer and People Manager in our Cloud Services team, you will play a pivotal role in shaping, evolving, and evangelising the services we provide to engineering teams across the whole organisation. You’ll lead technical decision-making, champion system-wide consistency, to drive the delivery of robust, mission-critical engineering capabilities that support our product teams to move quickly, adopt shared standards, and Focus on delivering value while we take care of the foundations. Alongside your technical responsibilities, you’ll also provide people leadership at multiple levels: managing individual contributors directly, supporting and coaching other managers, and building an environment where teams can thrive. You’ll balance hands-on technical Involvement with creating a supportive, inclusive, and high-performing culture that develops future leaders and sustains long-term organisational success.

Your responsibilities will include: 

• Managing and coaching a multi-level team that includes both individual contributors and people managers.
• Supporting and developing managers, helping them grow their leadership capabilities and scale their teams effectively.
• Driving a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement across the group.
• Championing diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of team leadership.
• Representing your team at a wider organisational level, influencing stakeholders, and aligning technical and people priorities.
• Fostering knowledge-sharing across teams and encouraging innovation in how we work.
• Handling relationships with vendors and contractors, ensuring quality delivery, knowledge transfer, and value for the organisation.
• Embedding agile ways of working across your teams, ensuring iterative delivery,
• continuous feedback, and alignment with business outcomes.

Our technology: 

Here’s a list of things we use a lot. It’s not exhaustive, but it gives you a taste of what our stack

and tools look like:

• Python; Terraform; Excalidraw; and a bit too much YAML
• Fastly; Tyk; Amazon Route 53; Amazon ECS
• Grafana; Prometheus; OpenTelemetry; Splunk

We don’t expect you to have worked with all of these; it’s a bonus if you have. To find out more, you can get an insight into how we work from our FT Product & Technology Medium Publication 

Leadership experience we’re looking for: 

• Experience managing both individual contributors and other managers, ideally across multiple teams or disciplines.
• A track record of coaching managers, developing future leaders, and creating succession plans.
• Comfort working with contractors and external vendors, integrating them effectively and ensuring they deliver value.
• Strong communication and influencing skills to align teams and stakeholders across an organisation.
• Familiarity with agile methodologies and experience guiding and coaching teams in iterative delivery

.Characteristics we value: 

• Attention to detail and common sense
• A natural coach and mentor, able to inspire trust and help others grow
• Experience building and nurturing inclusive, high-performing teams
• Enjoy learning and teaching — whether that be pair programming, lightning talks, good documentation, leading workshops or mentoring more junior colleagues and managers
• Strong communication and influencing skills, able to align across multiple stakeholders
• Comfort working with contractors and external partners, and integrating them effectively into team culture and delivery
• A collaborative and iterative mindset, with an appreciation for agile practices that enable teams to deliver value quickly and adapt to change.

Our benefits vary by location, but we are committed to providing best-in-class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community. Full details of our benefits are available here.

We’ve embraced a 50% hybrid working model (averaging two to three days onsite) that fosters trust and remote adaptability while encouraging in-person camaraderie and peer learning. Additionally, we are open to accommodating specific flexible working pattern requests for all roles where feasible.

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to help.

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.