Engineering Manager - AI Platform

Jackalope Digital LLC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension plan (match up to 5%)

Life insurance - three times annual</

Parental leave (maternity six months,

Cycle-to-work scheme

Flexible working hours

Learning materials and courses

Two charity days a year

Weekly food pop-up

Job summary

Thought Machine is hiring an Engineering Manager to lead a group of engineers in delivering AI-enabled tooling and cloud-native platforms. You will manage project delivery, contribute to the roadmap, and help scale the team while balancing hands-on technical work with leadership.

You will drive product ownership across platforms, collaborate with senior leadership, and mentor engineers to grow capability and impact within a fast-paced fintech environment.

Qualifications

• 2+ years engineering management experience in platform teams with AI tooling.
• Experience in cloud-native stacks and modern tech (Kubernetes, AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Strong technical background to drive decisions and autonomy.
• Ability to lead hands-on engineering while shaping vision and strategy.
• Experience developing platforms/tools used by other engineers.

Responsibilities

• Actively participate in technical discussions and design reviews.
• Measure team impact using data from users and systems.
• Understand internal needs and identify solutions with measurable success.
• Contribute to platform area vision and align with business goals.
• Engage in engineering-wide initiatives from recruitment to processes.
• Develop engineers and support career growth.
• Lead by example with code reviews and hands-on work.
• Champion best practices and emerging trends.

Skills

Engineering management

Cloud-native environment

Kubernetes

Go

Python

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Azure

Go

Python

Job description

Thought Machine's mission is bold – to properly and permanently rid the world's banks of legacy technology. To achieve this, we have developed the foundations of modern banking through core and payments technology which run natively in the cloud. What we are attempting is hard and means we need great people working together to build great technology.

We have grown rapidly in the past few years – growing our team to more than 550 individuals across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and our newly established Engineering Hub in Lisbon. We have raised more than £500m in funding and our investors include Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, Intesa Sanpaolo, Temasek, Nyca Partners, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, Standard Chartered Ventures, and more.

We have created a culture that enables our team to produce the best work in the industry while ensuring we have fun along the way. We're regularly cited as having a fantastic workplace culture and have been recognised by Sifted magazine as having one of the highest Glassdoor ratings for a UK fintech company and the industry's most generous employee share package. Named one of the world's most innovative fintechs by Global Finance Magazine, we were also recognised by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest-growing companies for two consecutive years—and a UK Best Employer for 2026.

Engineering Managers at Thought Machine lead complex technical projects to deliver on our roadmap. To accomplish this you will manage a group of talented engineers as they identify issues and implement creative solutions to address them. You will manage your own project deliverables, contribute to the vision and strategy of your area and help develop and grow your team. We are particularly excited to hear from people who show strong product ownership and enjoy switching between engineering management and being hands-on with technical work.

Your team’s primary mission is to enable everyone in Thought Machine to productively, safely, and easily solve their business problems with AI tooling. You will have a wide remit to design and implement new platforms, adjust pipelines, and introduce new tools when they are the right choice for the job. You will work closely with your team, senior leadership and internal users to define and execute your roadmap.

Duties

• Actively participating in technical discussions and design reviews.

• Taking a data driven approach and measuring your team’s impact with the data you can collect directly from your users.

• Understanding the needs, challenges and impediments of internal teams so you can identify solutions and measure success

• Contributing to the vision and strategy of your platform area, aligning it with broader engineering and business goals.

• Contributing to engineering-wide initiatives as part of the engineering management team on anything from recruitment to team processes.

• Develop engineers in your team and help them in their career development.

• Leading by example: Code reviews and hands on technical work

• Championing industry best practices and emerging trends to keep our team ahead of the curve.

Essential

• 2+ years experience of engineering management in platform teams that include AI tooling and capabilities

• Experience of working in a cloud-native environment, using modern technology stacks similar to the stack we use at Thought Machine (Kubernetes, AWS/GCP/Azure, golang/python).

• Technical background to drive technical decisions and great interpersonal skills to drive communication with your users. You should enjoy working in environments where you have a high level of responsibility and autonomy.

• You are comfortable wearing different Engineering Manager hats that suit the changing needs of a team as it evolves.

• You have experience developing platforms and tools that are used by other engineers either internally or externally.

Desirable

• Previously led an AI-first team driving organisational change

• Experience working in or managing internal platform teams

• Previously helped recruit and shape brilliant engineering teams.

• Taken an active role in defining and evaluating effective team processes.

• Previously worked in a hyper-growth environment.

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary

• Pension plan (match up to 5%)

• Life insurance - three times annual salary

• Competitive maternity (six months fully paid) and paternity leave (four weeks fully paid)

• Shared parental leave (matched to our maternity leave for the same point in time)

• 25 days holiday and bank holidays

• Flexible working hours

• Cycle-to-work scheme

• Electric car scheme

• Season ticket loan

• Access to outstanding learning materials and courses

• Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine

• All the latest tech you need

• Start the day properly with fresh fruit and cereals

• Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smoothies and drinks

• A talented and experienced team as your colleagues

• An environment where we encourage learning and progress

• Two charity days a year

• Weekly food pop-up

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.