Engineering Manager (Native Apps)

Rightmove PLC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading property portal in the UK is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead their native apps teams. You will guide engineers in creating reliable and intuitive mobile applications used by millions. The position requires strong leadership and a collaborative approach to improve delivery and team culture. Join a friendly environment that values diversity and personal development, while working in a hybrid model allowing flexibility between office and remote work.

Benefits

Private Medical Insurance

27 days of holiday plus volunteering days

Competitive compensation package

Access to employee benefits and discounts

Qualifications

• Prior experience managing engineers working on mobile apps or client-facing platforms.
• Proven track record of improving delivery and engineering quality.
• Strong abilities in planning, estimation, and negotiation.

Responsibilities

• Guide the development and growth of engineering teams with coaching and mentoring.
• Create and maintain realistic plans for native app initiatives.
• Ensure engineering quality and performance across codebases.

Skills

Mobile app management

Team leadership

Project planning

Collaboration

Technical decision-making

Job description

Role: Engineering Manager

Location: London office / Hybrid (2 days per week in the office)

Reporting to: Senior Engineering Manager

The Role

We’re looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our native apps teams at Rightmove. You’ll guide a talented group of iOS, Kotlin, and Java engineers who power our flagship mobile experiences, helping us build fast, reliable, and intuitive apps that millions rely on each month.

As an Engineering Manager in the native apps space, you won’t just be a people leader. You’ll be a delivery partner, a guardian of engineering quality, and a key voice in how we evolve our mobile platforms. You’ll work closely with Product and Design to ensure we’re solving the right problems, building the right things, and continually raising the bar on performance, reliability, and user experience.

This role shapes a critical part of how we plan, deliver, and accelerate our native apps strategy, while also helping engineers grow their skills and careers in a fast-moving, highly collaborative environment.

What You’ll Be Doing

People and Team Development

• Support the growth of iOS, Kotlin, and Java engineers through clear development goals, coaching, mentoring, and regular feedback.
• Build an inclusive and supportive team culture where people feel trusted, stretched, and energised by their work.
• Create strong alignment between personal development, platform maturity, and delivery outcomes.
• Champion our values and help the team stay connected, curious, and set up for long‑term success.

Planning and Delivery

• Partner with your Product Manager to shape priorities, capacity, and scope across native app initiatives.
• Bring clarity to the team by creating realistic plans that reflect platform constraints, technical complexity, and user impact.
• Keep delivery flowing smoothly by removing blockers, managing risks, and nudging the team toward better ways of working.
• Represent the native apps teams in cross‑functional planning, helping ensure we’re building the right things at the right time.

Technical Stewardship

• Support engineers and tech leads in maintaining the long‑term health, performance, and reliability of our iOS and Android codebases.
• Encourage and strengthen good engineering habits, including testing, observability, accessibility, security, performance, and continuous improvement.
• Help the team make thoughtful decisions about architecture, platform patterns, and modernisation, while balancing speed and sustainability.
• Foster collaboration with other EMs, architects, and shared platform teams to align on dependencies and broader system design.

Hiring and Talent Development

• Play a key role in hiring outstanding native app engineers, shaping the team with the skills and perspectives needed for the future of our apps.
• Guide onboarding and ongoing development, ensuring each person grows meaningfully with the team and the wider organisation.
• Advocate fairly and clearly for your engineers through calibration, performance reviews, and promotion processes.
• Evolve the structure and capabilities of the teams over time as our native strategy advances.

Collaboration and Leadership

• Build a strong partnership with your PM, acting as a clear and aligned leadership pair for the native app teams.
• Translate between technical decisions and business context, helping stakeholders understand impact, trade‑offs, and opportunities.
• Take a broader organisational perspective, ensuring local decisions support wider engineering and product goals.
• Influence practices, culture, and strategy across the native apps space and beyond.

What We’re Looking For

You’ll likely bring:

• Prior experience managing engineers working on mobile apps or other client‑facing platforms.
• A solid track record of improving delivery, ways of working, team health, and engineering quality.
• Confidence in planning, estimation, scope negotiation, and managing technical trade‑offs.
• A collaborative, empathetic approach, able to build strong relationships across engineering, product, and design.
• Steady, pragmatic leadership, especially when navigating ambiguity or cross‑team dependencies.
• A passion for helping engineers grow through coaching, feedback, and supportive challenge.

If you’re excited about shaping our native apps future and creating the environment where engineers do their best work, we’d love to hear from you.

Our Approach to AI

At Rightmove, we believe software and product are ultimately people problems, and everything we build aims to improve the lives of others. We see AI as a helpful way to create more space for the human side of our work, from understanding real needs to making sure we are solving the right problems in the right way. There is an expectation that you are proactive in exploring how AI can support your own workflow and productivity, and that you approach it with curiosity and an open mind.

About Rightmove

Our vision is to give everyone the belief they can make their move. We aim to make moving simpler, by giving everyone the best place to turn to and return to for access to the tools, expertise, trust and belief to make it happen.

We're home to the UK's largest choice of properties, and are the go‑to destination for millions of people planning their next move, reading the latest industry news, or just browsing what's on the market.

Despite this growth, we’ve remained a friendly, supportive place to work, with employee #1 still working here! We’ve done this by placing the Rightmove Hows at the heart of everything we do. These are the essential values that reflect our culture, and include:

• We create value…by delivering results and building trust with partners and consumers.
• We think bigger…by acting with curiosity and setting bold aspirations.
• We care deeply…by being real, having fun, and valuing diversity.
• We move together…by being one team - internally collaborative, externally competitive.
• We make a difference…by focusing on delivering measurable impact.

We believe in careers that open doors, and help our team develop by providing an open and inclusive work environment, offering ongoing training opportunities, and supporting charity fundraising events. And with 88% of Rightmovers saying we’re a great place to work, we’re clearly doing something right!

If all this has caught your eye, you may well be a Rightmover in the making...

People are the foundation of Rightmove - We’ll help you build a career on it.

What we offer

• Cash plan for dental, optical and physio treatments
• Private Medical Insurance, Pension and Life Insurance, Employee Assistance Plan
• 27 days holiday plus two (paid) volunteering days a year to give back, and holiday buy schemes
• Hybrid working pattern with 2 days in office
• Contributory stakeholder pension
• Life assurance at 4x your basic salary to a spouse, family member or other nominated person in your life
• Competitive compensation package
• Paid leave for maternity, paternity, adoption & fertility
• Travel Loans, Bike to Work scheme, Rental Deposit Loan
• Charitable contributions through Payroll Giving and donation matching
• Access deals and discounts on things like travel, electronics, fashion, gym memberships, cinema discounts and more

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Rightmove will never discriminate on the basis of age, disability, sex, race, religion or belief, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, or sexual orientation. At Rightmove, we believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce leads to better innovation, productivity, and overall success. We are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all employees, regardless of their background or identity, to develop and promote a diverse culture that reflects the communities we serve.

Ultimately, we care much more about the person you are and how you think and approach things, than a list of qualifications and buzzwords on a CV. Even if you can’t say ‘yes’ to all the above, but are smart, self‑motivated and passionate, then get in touch.