Senior Engineering Manager

IRIS Software Group is one of the UK’s largest privately held software companies. Its purpose is to be the most trusted provider of mission-critical software and services, ensuring customers get it right first time, every time.
 

Summary :
As a successful candidate you will be working as part of the IRIS Engineering function specifically on our iSams / Ed:gen MIS and IRIS Central solution portfolio. 

You will be leading several elite development / quality streams to deliver features, defect resolution and technical debt changes across our industry leading MIS software solution for our growing client base. The suite includes a mix of legacy and cloud modules. You will proactively work with key stakeholder from across the business in Technical / Customer support, Architecture, Product, Finance, Compliance and HR to mention just a few, to ensure your teams operate smoothly and at maximum efficiency, helping remove impediments where necessary.

You will develop a strong relationship with product management to ensure product releases are aligned to the vision and strategy of the business, balancing rapid /agile processes with the need to have high level estimation, capacity planning and target release scoping.

You will be responsible for the overall quality and on-time delivery of the products covered by your own teams, liaising with other development managers and the wider Technology organization to ensure that IRIS SDLC, GDPR and other governance standards are met.

You will be working closely with the other functions to ensure than cross department processes are followed and proactively improved, such as

• Agile delivery and release management/coordination and metrics reporting (DORA)
• Align with IRIS Technology initiatives (SSO, Security, Compliance etc.)
• Chair and participate in technical discussions in order verify and challenge technical design and development approaches, and own technical outcomes.
• Development tooling processes and workflows
• Workforce planning including recommendations for compensation planning and calibration activities
• Budgeting activities such as contributing to business case creation.
• Adherence to IRIS Procurement and other business compliance processes
• Innovation initiatives such as proof of concepts, hackathons etc.
• Staff Training, coaching & mentoring
• You will be the line manager for your teams and expected to set quarterly objectives, do performance appraisals, manage talent, performance and career progression for the group.
• The role is delivery focused, with key deadlines to be hit.

Main Responsibilities :

People

• Line management and coaching of multiple development & quality streams.
• Maintain and evolve team structures / skills matrix recommending changes that may remove risks or increase efficiencies.
• Own employee engagement of your teams ensuring all have active objectives, development plans and appropriate training in place from their line manager and that you contribute to cross departmental people initiatives.
• Recruitment ownership and regular review with HR.
• Recruitment and screening of third party / vendor staff.

Delivery

• Manage high level estimation process for requests coming from the business. Utilizing story points to monitor delivery metrics using industry tools like Plandek.
• Ensure appropriate delegation to your elite delivery teams, ensuring they are working towards expected release schedules with appropriate stage gates for all major milestones.
• Maintain and regularly review capacity models for your teams on a quarterly  basis, adjusting to meet quarterly delivery objectives.
• Working with product management to successfully scope release content via the estimation, capacity, and scoping process.
• Ensure elite delivery process ceremonies are maintained i.e. scoping, estimation, kickoffs, retrospectives and project closures.
• Ensure risks and dependencies are documented and properly managed through compliance governance processes.
• Drive quality to expected levels and contribute to go-live decision making for General Availability
• Own monitoring of release quality and support of the customer facing teams.

General

• Ensure consistency and adherence to SDLC processes across all teams reporting to you.
• Champion nonfunctional requirements, embracing DevOps and shift to left using CI/CD pipelines.
• Ensure development tooling is being used consistently & effectively.
• Proactive communication with all key relationship stakeholders including external providers.
• Participate in the annual budget planning processes proactively identifying the needs of your team given the expected deliveries.
• Drive continuous improvement and efficiency using productivity tools including AI.
• Align processes to achieve external Audit accreditations. 

Experience :

Required Skills: -

• Significant track record of successfully delivering parallel high value, quality software projects using agile methodologies.
• Proven ability to implement and optimize use of development tooling (e.g., Microsoft stack, Azure DevOps, GIT)
• Managing projects from inception to in-life maintenance and support
• Experience in leading multiple teams working in parallel, spanning both permanent and third-party staff.
• Experience with methods and techniques associated with planning and monitoring the progress of projects (DORA) and assessing their health.
• Experience of handling older technology stacks, taking them forward an opportunistic paring down of tech debt.
• Experience of performance management of senior technical staff across development, quality.
• You may at times be called on to perform root cause analysis of critical customer impacting issues utilizing your proven competency in the following technologies:
  • .Net
  • C#
  • SQL Server 2019+
  • HTML / JavaScript
  • Visual Studio
  • Git

Advantageous Legacy Skills: -

• Classic ASP
• Web Forms