Head of AI-First Engineering

Xpertise Recruitment; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Xpertise Recruitment is helping a fast-growing tech business recruit a Head of Product Engineering in Manchester. You will shape a scale‑able, AI‑driven product engineering organisation across SaaS portfolios, delivering high‑quality software with speed and governance.

You will define engineering strategy, build leadership, embed AI-native ways of working, and partner with executives to align technical delivery with business priorities in a hybrid, full‑time Manchester role.

Qualifications

• Extensive software engineering experience in SaaS environments.
• Proven success scaling engineering teams including engineering leads/managers.
• Experience delivering AI/ML/LLM-enabled products and features.
• Background in cloud-native SaaS platforms, ideally Azure and .NET.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the technical strategy and target architecture across the product portfolio.
• Build, coach, and develop engineering leaders and high-performing software teams.
• Drive AI-first engineering practices across design, development, testing, and operations.
• Own engineering delivery performance: predictability, quality and efficiency.
• Establish scalable development standards, governance frameworks, and quality processes.
• Partner with Product and senior stakeholders to align delivery with business priorities.
• Manage engineering capacity planning, budgets, and forecasting.
• Communicate technical decisions and investment needs to senior leadership.

Skills

Software leadership

Team scaling

Technical strategy

Agile practices

Stakeholder management

AI in development

Budget management

Multi-cloud

Azure

.NET

Tools

Azure

.NET

AI tooling

Job description

Xpertise Recruitment is helping a fast-growing tech business recruit a Head of Product Engineering in Manchester. You will shape a scale‑able, AI‑driven product engineering organisation across SaaS portfolios, delivering high‑quality software with speed and governance.

You will define engineering strategy, build leadership, embed AI-native ways of working, and partner with executives to align technical delivery with business priorities in a hybrid, full‑time Manchester role.