Engineering Manager

WeDo; Croydon; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

WeDo is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to join its established engineering group in Croydon. This newly created role offers the chance to shape how engineering operates as the business transitions toward SaaS and cloud.

You will lead a team of around 30, strengthen the SDLC, reduce manual steps, and improve CI/CD and release automation while preparing the desktop environment for SaaS. You'll work with Poland as part of the wider transformation and bring product thinking to

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering background with credibility in leadership roles.
• Experience leading technical teams and coaching engineers.
• Experience with desktop applications.
• Understanding of desktop vs SaaS release challenges.
• Proven ability to improve SDLC and engineering effectiveness.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD, automated testing, and release automation.
• Experience addressing quality and security issues in a practical way.
• Balanced focus on technical, product, and customer considerations.

Responsibilities

• Lead and support engineers within the wider engineering organisation.
• Improve engineering effectiveness across the SDLC.
• Identify and remove manual steps from the current release process.
• Improve CI/CD, automated testing and release automation.
• Address flaky tests, quality issues and security vulnerabilities as systemic challenges.
• Explain engineering processes and why they matter to the team.
• Prepare the environment for the transition from desktop to SaaS/cloud.
• Consider AI-assisted development and its impact on testing, security and release processes.
• Promote product thinking and understand customer usage of software.
• Collaborate with Poland engineering capability as part of the transformation.
• Improve engineering practices pragmatically without replacing working systems.

Skills

C#/.NET

Engineering leadership

Desktop apps

CI/CD

Automation

QA testing

Job description

Location: Croydon – 2 days per week in the office

Work Type: Permanent

Role

We’re looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to join an established engineering group at an important point in its journey.

This is a newly created role with the opportunity to make a genuine impact on how engineering operates. The business currently has an established desktop application environment and is preparing for its future transition towards SaaS and cloud.

Before that transition begins, there is an opportunity to strengthen engineering effectiveness across the existing environment – improving the SDLC, reducing manual processes, increasing automation and creating a smoother, more predictable approach to delivering quality software.

You’ll inherit leadership responsibilities within a wider engineering group of around 30 people and play a role in building and leading capability in Poland as part of the wider transformation.

This isn't about joining and rewriting everything from scratch. It's about understanding what already works, identifying where engineering can improve and bringing the team with you on that journey.

Responsibilities

As Engineering Manager, you'll combine technical credibility, people leadership and engineering strategy.

Your focus will include:

• Leading and supporting engineers within the wider engineering organisation.
• Improving engineering effectiveness across the software development lifecycle.
• Identifying and removing manual steps from the current release process.
• Improving CI/CD, automated testing and release automation.
• Addressing flaky tests, quality issues and security vulnerabilities as systemic engineering challenges rather than isolated problems.
• Helping engineers understand not only what they are doing, but why engineering processes and practices matter.
• Preparing the engineering environment for the future transition from desktop applications towards SaaS and cloud.
• Considering how AI-assisted development impacts the wider SDLC, particularly testing, security, quality and release processes.
• Bringing greater Product thinking into engineering by understanding how and why customers use the software.
• Playing a role in building and leading the Poland engineering capability as part of the wider transformation.
• Improving engineering practices pragmatically, without unnecessarily replacing existing systems or processes that work.

Required Skills

We're looking for someone who has started their career in software engineering and progressed into engineering leadership while maintaining strong technical credibility.

Experience we're particularly interested in includes:

• A strong software engineering background, ideally within C#/.NET environments.
• Engineering leadership experience with the ability to challenge, coach and support technical teams.
• Experience working with or leading teams responsible for desktop applications.
• An understanding of the different challenges involved in developing and releasing desktop software compared with SaaS products.
• Experience improving SDLC and engineering effectiveness.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD, automated testing and release automation.
• Experience tackling engineering quality issues such as flaky tests, manual release processes and security vulnerabilities.
• Strong people leadership skills.
• The ability to balance technical, Product and customer considerations when making engineering decisions.
• A pragmatic approach to transformation and continuous improvement.

Experience considering or implementing AI-assisted software development practices would also be valuable, particularly where you've looked beyond code generation at the impact increased development velocity has on testing, security, quality and release processes.

Why should I apply?

This is an opportunity to join before a significant engineering transformation begins rather than arriving halfway through one.

You'll have the chance to influence how an established engineering organisation evolves, improve the foundations of the existing desktop environment and help prepare the team for its future move towards SaaS and cloud.

There are tangible engineering problems to solve today – from automation and testing through to release processes and engineering effectiveness – alongside the longer-term opportunity to influence how the organisation approaches modern software delivery.

You'll also have the opportunity to shape teams across the UK and Poland, bringing your own experience into an established engineering group while helping define what the next stage of its journey looks like.

Interview Process

The interview process consists of three stages:

Stage 1: 45-minute conversation with the hiring team

Stage 2: Technical test

Stage 3: Two-hour onsite final interview in Reigate