EMEA Engineering Manager — AI-First Leadership

PENCIL; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days PTO + holidays

Health insurance

Wellness stipend

Remote - work from home in UK

Parental leave

London office access

Flexible working hours

Job summary

Pencil is seeking an Engineering Manager in the UK to lead engineering across several teams, focusing on people, process and delivery. The role is leadership‑only, not hands‑on coding, and will drive how AI‑first workflows are implemented with human oversight.

You will hire, coach, and develop engineers, align priorities with Product and Design, and ensure predictable delivery. A strong track record in SaaS, agile delivery and cross‑team collaboration is essential.

Qualifications

• Several years managing engineers, including managing multiple teams or other managers.
• Track record of improving team process and delivery (agile practices, planning, metrics) with measurable results.
• Strong people management: coaching, giving candid feedback, managing performance and growing talent.
• Experience supporting hiring (interviewing, assessing candidates) and retaining high‑performing engineers, and building diverse teams.
• Technical fluency: understand architecture and trade‑offs, spot risks, earn engineers’ trust without coding or designing systems.
• Track record of teams delivering measurable value (customer or business outcomes), not just shipping features.
• Hands‑on experience introducing AI tools into how a team works, with human judgment remaining essential.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach and develop a large group of engineers and team leads across multiple teams.
• Keep processes aligned across teams (planning, delivery cadence, incident and release management, retros).
• Support the TPM in aligning priorities with Product, Design and Data.
• Participate in interview loops and help onboard new joiners.
• Foster a healthy, inclusive team culture and address burnout and performance issues early.
• Promote a culture of continuous learning with open reviews of failures.
• Stay close to architecture and roadmap discussions to back leads' decisions.
• Tie work to agreed outcomes for customers and the business.
• Champion AI‑first ways of working with clear human review.

Skills

People management

Engineering leadership

Agile practices

Performance reviews

Career development

Interviewing

Hiring

Architectural awareness

AI tools adoption

Delivery improvement

Job description

Pencil is seeking an Engineering Manager in the UK to lead engineering across several teams, focusing on people, process and delivery. The role is leadership‑only, not hands‑on coding, and will drive how AI‑first workflows are implemented with human oversight.

You will hire, coach, and develop engineers, align priorities with Product and Design, and ensure predictable delivery. A strong track record in SaaS, agile delivery and cross‑team collaboration is essential.