Engineering Manager

Ki Financial Limited; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Ki Financial Limited is seeking an Engineering Manager to build and lead high-performing engineering teams. You will drive technical strategy, architecture, and infrastructure in partnership with the CTO and Senior Engineering Manager, while ensuring delivery and professional development across squads.

You will recruit, mentor, and manage engineers, champion Agile/Lean practices, and collaborate with stakeholders to align technical initiatives with Ki's strategic objectives.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineers and building high-performing teams.
• Strong background in software development with microservices architecture.
• Proven ability to align technical strategy with business objectives.
• Experience with Agile Software Development and Lean methodologies.
• Direct commercial experience with cloud providers (GCP preferred).

Responsibilities

• Recruit and lead technical talent.
• Be both highly technical and an effective people manager.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive engineering initiatives.
• Measure impact of the team and set clear goals.
• Develop and implement technology strategy (architecture, tech stack, infrastructure).
• Represent Ki as a senior management voice to stakeholders.

Skills

Technical leadership

Delivery focus

Agile coaching

People management

Communication

Microservices design

Java

Python

JavaScript

Node.js

Spring Boot

Flask

Kotlin

GCP experience

Tools

Jira

Job description

Who are we?

Look at the latest headlines and you will see something Ki insures. Think space shuttles, world tours, wind farms, and even footballers’ legs.

Ki’s mission is simple. Digitally disrupt and revolutionise a 335-year-old market. Working with Google and UCL, Ki has created a platform that uses algorithms, machine learning and large language models to give insurance brokers quotes in seconds, rather than days.

Ki is proudly the biggest global algorithmic insurance carrier. It is the fastest growing syndicate in the Lloyd's of London market, and the first ever to make $100m in profit in 3 years.

Ki’s teams have varied backgrounds and work together in an agile, cross-functional way to build the very best experience for its customers. Ki has big ambitions but needs more excellent minds to challenge the status-quo and help it reach new horizons.

Where you come in?

Our broker platform is the core technology crucial to Ki's success – allowing us to evolve underwriting intelligently and unlock massive scale.

We're a multi-disciplined team, bringing together expertise in software and data engineering, full stack development, platform operations, algorithm research, and data science. Our squads focus on delivering high-impact features – we favour a highly iterative, analytical approach.

We are looking for an Engineering Manager who is experienced in building successful engineering teams and who has the following abilities:

• You know how to help teams maintain a focus on delivery, and ensure they are motivated, collaborating and working well
• You understand Agile and Lean methodologies and can demonstrate these through effective coaching
• You understand the importance of professional development and support individuals with setting goals and development plans
• You are passionate about helping others achieve their goals
• You excel at learning and push yourself to develop your skills
• You are an excellent communicator, able to deliver information at all levels (technical and non-technical) and influence where needed

What you will be doing:

• Recruit and lead technical talent
• Be both highly technical and an effective people manager
• Collaborate with various functions, drive engineering initiatives, and have an impact at an organisational level
• Measure the impact of your team and set clear expectations and goals
• Work with the CTO and Senior Engineering Manager to develop and implement the strategy for technological development (the architecture, tech stack and infrastructure) in support of Ki’s strategic vision and objectives
• Represent Ki as a senior management role to senior stakeholders (KiMC, Investors, etc)

• Experience in the same or related role and experience of leading other engineers

• Previous experience of software development in the financial markets, FinTech or InsurTech is preferable
• Strong technical strategy planning experience, able to advocate for proposed solutions across an organisation at all levels
• Experience with all phases of software development life cycle, best practices, and Agile Software Development
• Proven experience designing and developing microservice-based architectures
• A background in development with strong prior experience in languages and frameworks such as Java, Python, JavaScript, Node.js, Spring Boot, Flask, Kotlin
• Direct commercial experience with a major cloud provider. GCP is preferred
• Experience working in and advocating for a fully-automated, rapid development environment where tools and approaches such as CI/CD, DevOps, and GitOps were utilised
• Experience with project management and workflow tools (e.g. Jira)
• Excellent organisation and time management skills, setting a continuous delivery rhythm for our teams
• Experience working in scaling teams

What to expect during the recruitment process:

1) Initial recruiter screening call

2) Interview with hiring manager

3) Technical Interview (this may vary depending on the role)

4) Values Interview