Head of Core Engineering

Allianz Partners; Croydon; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Allianz Partners seeks a strategic Head of Core Engineering to lead a large-scale engineering organisation powering data, analytics and AI ecosystems. You will shape structure, drive delivery excellence, and foster a high-performance culture across engineering platforms, product teams, and shared services.

You will coach Engineering Managers and senior leaders, align engineering capabilities to business priorities, and partner with data, AI, security, governance and product functions to realise

Qualifications

• Significant engineering leadership experience in large organisations.
• Proven ability to scale teams and transform engineering operating models.
• Strong track record of delivering through Engineering Managers and senior leaders.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership across platform, backend/frontend, and services teams.
• Design and scale organisational structure for growth and efficiency.
• Drive hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, succession, and talent development.
• Establish governance, metrics, and operating rhythms for predictable delivery.

Skills

Engineering leadership

People management

Strategic planning

Organisational design

Hiring & talent development

Stakeholder management

Job description

We are seeking a strategic and people-focused Head of Core Engineering to lead a large-scale engineering organisation responsible for the platforms, services, and engineering foundations that power our data, analytics, and AI ecosystem.

This is a senior leadership role overseeing both the engineering platforms that enable software delivery at scale and the business-facing product engineering teams that deliver customer and internal solutions. You will shape organisational design, scale engineering capability, drive delivery excellence, and build a culture that empowers teams to perform at their best.

Leading through a strong management and technical leadership layer, you will focus on organisation, people, strategy, capacity, and execution while enabling your engineering leaders to own technical direction and architecture decisions.

As a key member of the broader technology leadership community, you will partner closely with data, AI, platform, governance, and business stakeholders to ensure engineering capabilities continue to support Allianz Partners' strategic ambitions.

What You'll Do

• Provide leadership across platform engineering, infrastructure, backend engineering, frontend engineering, and business service delivery teams.
• Build and evolve an organisational structure that supports growth, scalability, and operational efficiency.
• Drive hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, succession management, and talent development across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Create an inclusive, high-performance culture focused on accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Develop Leaders and Scale Capability

• Lead and coach Engineering Managers, Technical Leads, and senior engineering leaders.
• Establish clear expectations, accountability, and development plans across management and leadership populations.
• Strengthen leadership capability throughout the organisation and build a sustainable pipeline of future leaders.
• Support teams through organisational growth, transformation, and change.

Drive Engineering Excellence and Delivery

• Own delivery health, organisational capacity, and execution across multiple engineering functions.
• Ensure teams are appropriately staffed, structured, and aligned to business priorities.
• Identify and remove delivery risks, bottlenecks, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Establish effective operating rhythms, governance structures, and performance metrics that enable predictable delivery at scale.

Shape the Engineering Operating Model

• Define and evolve team topology, ownership models, and engineering ways of working.
• Ensure clear interfaces between platform engineering teams and product delivery teams.
• Promote the effective adoption of shared standards, engineering frameworks, and platform capabilities.
• Create an operating environment that balances autonomy, consistency, quality, and speed of delivery.

Partner Across Technology and Business Functions

• Collaborate closely with senior leaders across Data, AI Engineering, Security, Governance, Operations, and Product organisations.
• Support strategic planning, investment decisions, and long-term organisational development.
• Represent the engineering organisation in leadership, planning, architecture, and governance forums.
• Translate engineering performance, delivery outcomes, and organisational health into meaningful business insights.

Build and Scale Engineering Talent

• Establish best practices across recruitment, interviewing, onboarding, and career development.
• Ensure consistent hiring standards across engineering disciplines and seniority levels.
• Drive performance management, career frameworks, succession planning, and compensation calibration.
• Champion employee engagement, retention, and leadership development initiatives.

What You’ll Bring

• Significant engineering leadership experience, typically gained over 12+ years in software engineering and technology organisations.
• Proven success leading large engineering functions through Engineering Managers and senior technical leaders.
• Experience managing complex, multi-team organisations with accountability for people, structure, delivery, and organisational performance.
• Demonstrated ability to scale teams, lead organisational transformation, and build sustainable engineering operating models.

Technical Understanding

• Cloud-native platforms and infrastructure.
• Kubernetes and large-scale platform engineering.
• Modern CI/CD, DevOps, and GitOps practices.
• Microservices, API-driven architectures, and distributed systems.
• Modern backend engineering environments, including Java and Python ecosystems.
• Frontend application delivery within large engineering organisations.
• Engineering platforms and shared services that enable product delivery teams at scale.

Organisational and Strategic Capability

• Experience designing and evolving engineering organisations, ownership models, and delivery structures.
• Strong understanding of how platform teams support and enable domain-aligned product teams.
• Demonstrated success balancing strategic initiatives with day-to-day delivery needs.
• Experience integrating new teams, capabilities, or organisational functions while maintaining delivery momentum.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of how engineering investment supports business outcomes.

Leadership Skills

• Exceptional people leadership and coaching capabilities.
• Strong stakeholder management skills at executive and senior leadership levels.
• Ability to influence across organisational boundaries and align diverse stakeholders around a common vision.
• Excellent communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Data-driven decision maker with a strong focus on outcomes and continuous improvement.

What we offer

Our employees play an integral part in our success as a business. We appreciate that each of our employees are unique and have unique needs, ambitions and we enjoy being a part of their journey. We are there to empower and encourage you with your personal and professional development ensuring that you take control by offering a large variety of courses and targeted development programs. All that in a global environment where international mobility and career progression are encouraged. Caring for your health and wellbeing is key priority for us. This is why we build Work Well programs to providing you with peace of mind and give the flexibility in planning and arranging for a better work-life balance.

At Allianz we use some AI-assisted technology as part of our recruitment process to help match candidates to roles based on skills, experience, job title, and location. AI supports our recruiters by enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of candidate assessments and job recommendations, while all applications are reviewed by our recruitment team and final hiring decisions are made by humans.

103223 | Operations | Professional | Allianz Executive | Allianz Partners | Full-Time | Permanent

Allianz Group is one of the most trusted insurance and asset management companies in the world. Caring for our employees, their ambitions, dreams and challenges is what makes us a unique employer. We are united by a shared commitment: to put our customers first and at the center of everything we do. Their needs inspire our thinking and guide our actions. Together, we can build an environment where everyone feels empowered and confident to explore, grow and shape a better future – for our customers and for the world around us.

At Allianz, we stand for unity: we believe that a united world is a more prosperous world, and we are dedicated to consistently advocating for equal opportunities for all. The foundation for this is our inclusive workplace, where people and performance both matter, and where integrity, fairness, inclusion and trust are at the heart of our culture. We therefore welcome applications regardless of race, ethnicity or cultural background, age, gender, nationality, religion, social class, disability or sexual orientation, or any other characteristics protected under applicable local laws and regulations.

Join us. Let's care for tomorrow. Note: Having different strengths, experiences, perspectives and approaches is an integral part of Allianz’s company culture. One means to achieve this is a regular rotation of Allianz employees across functions, Allianz entities and geographies. Therefore, Allianz expects from its employees a general openness and a high motivation to regularly change positions and collect experiences across Allianz Group.