Software Engineering Manager

Company Description

The British Airways (BA) Architecture & Engineering team is part of BA Digital within the International Airlines Group (IAG), one of the world’s leading airline groups and owner of some of the biggest brands in the sky.

Our vision is to delight customers, enable our colleagues, accelerate business performance, increase shareholder value, and protect our business through the innovative and agile use of technology and data to become the most trusted digital airline. 

To harness our full potential across BA Digital, we are changing fundamentally our ways of working by transitioning at speed into a Product led organisation.

Together we are building a better BA (British Airways)

Job Description

Purpose of the role

This is a key hire for the team and we are looking for a candidate who can drive software engineering strategy and support day-to-day execution for our Developer Experience team. You will focus on cloud services, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

As a Software Engineering Manager, you will be working in a central software engineering team performing a critical role in terms of ensuring that the company’s products are built with security considerations from the ground up whilst also improving developer efficiency. You will have line management responsibility for software engineers, as well as regularly engage with 3rd party and Suppliers, and be responsible for identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities and Tasks 

• Develop software engineering strategy by defining a strategic vision for the organization’s DevSecOps practice, aligned to business goals and objectives.

• Deliver cloud platform solutions that achieve the identified requirements, using proven methods, tools and techniques. Obtaining specialist advice on aspects of the design, technical policy and test strategy from appropriate specialists as required.

• Working with FinOps and product teams to optimize platform spending (AWS fees, etc.) and ensure maximum utilization of systems. 

• Create environments that enable and encourage Continuous Improvement/Development and DevSecOps ways of working, taking input from process owners and other subject matter experts to gain a great understanding of business ways of working and challenges.

• Provide support to the Software Engineers, guide them in implementing and delivering the vision through effective planning, unblocking obstacles, and providing coaching.

• Develop growth plans for the team to foster their career development and advancement.

• Review the skill and expertise requirements to accomplish team goals and identify staffing and talent resources to fill project roles.

• Coordinate with team to define the measures of success for process improvements.

• Continuously improve systems, solutions and business processes through working with process owners and other subject matter experts to gain a great understanding of business ways of working and challenges.

• Provide support on systems/solutions, build, test and implement fault fixes and monitor the system to prevent problems occurring (e.g. DevSecOps environment).

• Consider and evaluate potential package “off the shelf” solutions in association with IAG Tech Architecture to achieve the defined requirements (including piloting, prototyping and assessing cost of potential solutions).

This role may require travel and working from multiple sites/locations. You must be willing and able to travel to participate in meetings, workshops, and other related activities. 

Qualifications

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computing science or equivalent experience 

Desired qualification 

• Specific technical experience and qualifications required 

Skills

• Excellent ability to lead development, testing and deployment activities in SaaS, IaaS and PaaS solutions

• Forming strong stakeholder relationships, with a proven ability of influencing and persuading internally and externally

• Effective team leadership and development skills

• Effective stakeholder management, balancing and finding compromises between opposing views and opinions 

• Business partnering, working as a valued partner with stakeholders across a diverse operation, delivering a value-added service to business customers.

• Ability to recognize priorities and guide others towards the accomplishment of strategic business goals and objectives 

• Embracing and managing both business and IT change as necessary to help shape future direction

• Dynamic, problem-solving approach coupled with the ability to create a positive working environment.

• Innovation - transforming industry trends into practical, cost effective solutions

• Identifies and contributes to the continual improvement of software engineering capability across the organization 

• Fluent written and spoken English 

Experience

• Proven expertise in the technical design, build, test and support of large and/or complex cloud solutions.

• Demonstrable experience of deploying and maintaining Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions

• Experience in translating complex business requirements into system design, taking into account technical environment(s), ability of user group to interact with the system and expected life and volatility of system.

• Demonstrable expertise in a specific technical specialism and/or broad technical expertise.

• Experience of developing in an agile and/or DevSecOps environment is highly desirable, including unit testing, behaviour driven development, and continuous integration/continuous deployment. 

• Experience of operating across multiple countries and cultures is desirable, but not essential.