Engineering Manager

Global Sports Jobs Limited; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mindful Me Days

Flexible working

UK office access

Wellness facilities

Employee Assistance Programs

Learning & development budget

Job summary

Champion Data is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a group of engineers, providing both people and technical leadership across client engagements. You will coach engineers, drive performance reviews, and shape architecture while maintaining hands-on credibility to unblock teams.

The role emphasizes building high-performing teams, fostering learning, and balancing delivery with sustainable engineering practices in a hybrid, globally distributed environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including senior or technical leadership.
• Proven experience directly leading, coaching and developing engineers.
• Strong track record of building high-performing engineering teams.
• Deep understanding of modern software engineering, cloud platforms, distributed systems and scalable architectural patterns.
• Experience designing, reviewing and guiding complex technical solutions.
• Experience operating across multiple teams, products or client engagements.
• Ability to balance people leadership, technical leadership and delivery priorities.
• Strong written and verbal communication across technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead, develop and support an allocated group of engineers, conducting regular 1:1s and career conversations.
• Set expectations, provide feedback, identify development needs and progression opportunities.
• Build trust and psychological safety, support recruitment, onboarding and retention of engineers.
• Coach engineers in technical and leadership development, expand autonomy and decision-making capabilities.
• Promote continuous learning and knowledge sharing across teams.
• Provide visible technical leadership across teams, products and client engagements.

Skills

10+ years software

Engineering leadership

Team leadership

Cloud platforms

Distributed systems

Systems architecture

Communication

Influence leadership

Job description

About the Role

The Engineering Manager is a senior people and technical leader within Champion Data's Technology function. The role is accountable for leading, developing and supporting a group of engineers while providing technical guidance across the teams and client engagements they support. It combines people leadership and engineering leadership, with an equal split between people leadership, capability development and organisational responsibilities, and technical leadership, engineering oversight and selective hands-on contribution. The role operates beyond the boundaries of an individual project or client engagement, and may contribute directly to client delivery while people and organisational leadership remain core.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, develop and support an allocated group of engineers, running regular 1:1s and performance, development and career conversations
• Set clear expectations, provide timely constructive feedback, identify strengths, development needs and progression opportunities, and address performance or behavioural concerns early and constructively.
• Build trust, engagement, accountability and psychological safety, and support recruitment, onboarding and retention of high-quality engineering talent.
• Coach and mentor engineers across technical, professional and leadership development, develop autonomy, judgement and decision-making capability, identify future technical and people leaders, create opportunities for engineers to broaden experience and increase organisational impact
• And promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing and deliberate capability uplift.
• Provide visible technical leadership across teams, products and client engagements, reinforcing architecture, engineering standards, practices and technical direction established by the Head of Engineering.
• Participate in solution design, architecture discussions, technical reviews and major engineering decisions, challenge technical approaches where better solutions exist, and encourage thoughtful innovation.
• Identify technical risk, quality concerns and capability gaps early, ensure they are addressed, and ensure engineering decisions balance immediate delivery needs with maintainability, scalability and long-term platform strategy.
• Model and reinforce a culture of engineering excellence, accountability, curiosity and continuous improvement, champion modern engineering practices, automation and AI-enabled ways of working, and share learning across teams.
• Maintain proximity to client and product delivery, work closely with Delivery, Product and Engineering leadership, represent Champion Data in technical client conversations, elevate material technical, capability, people or delivery risks early
• And ensure client delivery pressures do not undermine sustainable engineering practices or team wellbeing.
• Maintain strong contemporary engineering capability and remain sufficiently hands-on to provide credible technical leadership, contributing directly where it materially improves an outcome, unblocks a team, validates an approach or demonstrates a pattern
• Participate in code and design reviews with an emphasis on quality, coaching and capability development
• Avoid becoming the default owner of complex engineering work by enabling engineers to own and deliver that work
• And measure technical contribution through team capability and engineering outcomes rather than individual coding volume.

Required Experience & Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience in senior or technical leadership roles.
• Demonstrated experience directly leading, coaching and developing engineers.
• Strong track record of building effective, high-performing engineering teams.
• Deep understanding of modern software engineering, cloud platforms, distributed systems and scalable architectural patterns.
• Experience designing, reviewing and guiding complex technical solutions.
• Experience operating across multiple teams, products or client engagements.
• Demonstrated ability to balance people leadership, technical leadership and delivery priorities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills across technical, commercial and non-technical audiences.
• Strong people leadership, coaching and performance management capability.
• Strong contemporary engineering and architectural capability.
• Ability to lead through influence, clarity and trust rather than becoming the technical bottleneck.
• Strong judgement and decision-making capability.
• Ability to identify and develop capability in others.
• Strong customer and stakeholder communication.
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technology and AI-enabled engineering.

Preferred Skills

• Experience working directly with customers and senior stakeholders is desirable.

Workplace

• Hybrid environment; the team works globally, with two weeks per year during which employees can work remotely from anywhere worldwide.

Benefits & Perks

• Mindful Me Days: four days per year dedicated to wellbeing.
• Flexible working: hybrid environment, including two weeks per year during which employees can work remotely from anywhere worldwide.
• UK office: access to a co-working space in London and Leeds.
• Offices have end-of-journey facilities including showers, wellness/prayer room and games.
• Employee Assistance Programs: 24/7 access to financial support and counselling.
• Wellness Incentive: support for home office setup or contribution towards a wellness activity/service of the employee's choosing.
• Get to the Game: funds towards tickets for the employee and family/friends to attend sporting events globally.
• Advance You Learning and Development: annual budget for learning and development activities plus Brain Block Time, monthly time set aside to learn or study.
• LinkedIn Learning: access to an external learning platform.
• Social events: including an annual Family Day and Volunteer Day.
• Paid parental leave.