Head of Product Engineering

JD GROUP; Bury; On-site; GBP 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global retailer in Bury seeks a tech-focused leader to optimize engineering operations. The role involves balancing tech strategy, managing teams, and enhancing product delivery in a fast-paced environment. Ideal candidates have a strong technical background, proven leadership, and experience with Agile principles. This position offers an opportunity to make a substantial impact within the organization.

Qualifications

• Evidence of organisational design with a mastery of matrix orgs.
• Proven track record of delivering industry-leading software.
• Experience managing offshore and third-party development teams.

Responsibilities

• Balancing long-term tech strategy with short-term operational excellence.
• Identifying and removing team impediments to improve efficiency.
• Building high-functioning teams and fostering a culture of improvement.

Skills

Technical background

Organisational design

Team Topologies

Managing offshore teams

Systems thinking

Understanding of XP and Agile principles

Inspiring and supporting others

Delivering industry-leading software

CI and CD pipelines

Familiarity with AWS

Experience with MACH architecture

Tools

AWS

CI/CD Pipelines

Event-driven architectures

Job description

Overview

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading global omnichannel retailer of Sports Fashion and Outdoor brands. The Group now has over 3,000 stores across 38 territories with a strong presence in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. In addition, we operate over 200 JD Gyms nationwide.

Description

This role is about supporting and improving teams through servant leadership & coaching. Delivering technology solutions at pace for stakeholders, exceeding customer expectations and incrementally delivering value.

As a single-threaded leader, you will be obsessed with optimising an engineering organisation through systems thinking and data to remove bottlenecks and accelerate product delivery.

Responsibilities

• Balancing long-term tech strategy with short-term operational excellence
• Deeply understanding costs and trends to operate efficiently at scale
• Building high-functioning teams
• Upholding the high engineering bar expected in JD Technology
• Fostering a culture of continual improvement and critical feedback
• Identifying and removing team impediments
• Providing architectural, process and technical guidance
• Facilitating, presenting and resolving conflicts
• Supporting change management, incidents and OOH

Experience

• You’ll have a technical background, but won’t be coding
• Evidence of organisational design with a mastery of matrix orgs and Team Topologies
• Managing offshore and third-party development teams
• Experience in retail will help you acclimatise to the pace of the organisation
• A systems thinker who can find and remove the bottlenecks
• A thorough understanding of XP and Agile principles
• The ability to inspire, support and hold others accountable
• A proven track record of delivering industry-leading software with an appreciation of architectural patterns and trade-offs
• In-depth experience of CI and CD pipelines
• Familiarity with AWS cloud
• Experience of MACH and event-driven architectures (with Shopify as a bonus)