Future Systems Engineering Practice Lead

Softwire; Manchester, Cambridge, Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 124,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension: 5%

25 days annual leave

Eye test

Cycle to work

EV lease scheme

Payroll charity donations

Job summary

Softwire is seeking a Practice Lead for Future Systems Engineering in the UK. The role combines technical leadership with commercial acumen to shape the service, drive market relevance, and enable delivery excellence.

You will guide offerings, pricing, and strategic direction while building a cadre of hands-on consultants to execute engagements. You will lead client conversations, shape bids, and mentor teams, balancing billable work with practice development across multiple offices, reporting

Qualifications

• 8+ years experience in technical roles, including at least 4 years in an agency or consultancy context.
• Designing and delivering systems at scale with non-functional requirements (performance, resilience, security, cost).
• Fluent in modern cloud architecture, including serverless and event-driven designs.
• Working understanding of how AI is changing engineering practice.
• Commercial fluency: business drivers, procurement, contracting models and margins.
• Comfortable in ambiguous contexts and distilling needs into practical solutions.
• Excellent consulting and advisory skills with peer-level conversations with executives.
• Pre-sales experience in an agency/consultancy context.

Responsibilities

• Articulate the Future Systems Engineering proposition for go-to-market teams.
• Discern technology shifts, regulatory changes and client demand signals for future planning.
• Enable new kinds of work with new offerings, approaches and commercial propositions.
• Strengthen capability by running the Systems Engineering Community of Practice and mentoring engineers.

Skills

Leadership

Consulting

Public speaking

Pre-sales

Cloud architecture

AI in engineering

Job description

Softwire is seeking a Practice Lead for Future Systems Engineering in the UK. The role combines technical leadership with commercial acumen to shape the service, drive market relevance, and enable delivery excellence.

You will guide offerings, pricing, and strategic direction while building a cadre of hands-on consultants to execute engagements. You will lead client conversations, shape bids, and mentor teams, balancing billable work with practice development across multiple offices, reporting