Manager, Software Engineering

Sugar AI Limited; Metropolitan Borough of Solihull; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

UK Pension Scheme

Private medical and dental insurance

Health & Wellness Reimbursement

Unpaid sabbatical leave

Educational Resources - Career & PD

Various discount programs

Merit-based career opportunities

Job summary

SugarAI UK Limited is seeking an experienced engineering manager to lead a team of software engineers and shape AI-first development practices. You will establish engineering standards, coach talent, and drive delivery with data-driven velocity across the stack.

You will partner with product and stakeholders to align engineering with business goals, foster psychological safety, and build multidisciplinary teams spanning front end, back end, data, and QA in a hybrid UK setting.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of direct engineering management experience with a track record of developing individuals, managing performance, hiring talent, and building high-functioning teams.
• Experience guiding architectural decisions and engineering standards in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong focus on AI-first development, spec-driven workflows, and high-quality delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of software engineers through structured 1:1s and performance conversations.
• Rebuild team culture with psychological safety, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Own delivery by establishing effective operating rhythms, removing blockers, and metrics-driven planning.
• Be the technical conscience of the team, guiding code quality, testing, reliability, and maintainability.
• Lead adoption of AI-first tooling and empower engineers as orchestrators in a spec-driven environment.
• Develop multidisciplinary engineers by breaking silos across front end, back end, data, and QA.
• Partner with product and stakeholders to align delivery with business priorities and communicate progress.

Skills

Engineering management

Software development

AI-first development

Stakeholder communication

Data-driven decisions

Job description

About SugarAI UK Limited

SugarAI is redefining CRM for the age of AI. We’re delivering on the original promise of CRM—turning fragmented customer and revenue signals into clear, prioritized action. Instead of more dashboards or surface-level insights, we help teams focus on what matters most and know exactly what to do next. More than two decades after our founding, we’re entering a new chapter with clarity and momentum—building intelligent, intuitive solutions that work within the flow of how teams actually sell and serve. We’re focused on solving complex, real-world challenges where relationships, context, and precision make all the difference. Our global team is united by a shared commitment to impact, ownership, and continuous growth. We create an environment where thoughtful ideas move quickly, where people are trusted to lead, and where flexibility supports how great work gets done. If you’re excited to help shape what’s next in AI-driven CRM—and build technology that drives real outcomes—we’d love to meet you.

Impact You Will Make in the Role (Key Responsibilities)

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of software engineers through structured 1:1s, career development planning, performance feedback, and clearly set expectations, owning the full people management cycle includinggoal-setting, reviews, promotions, and compensation conversations.
• Rebuild team culture from the ground up, establishingpsychological safety, accountability, and a genuine appetite for continuous improvement, identifyingroot causes of underperformance rather than addressing symptoms.
• Own delivery by introducing and maintainingeffective operating rhythms, removing blockers systematically, and bringing rigour to planning and sprint health using metrics including velocity, cycle time, throughput, and defect rates.
• Be the technical conscience of the team, setting and enforcing engineering standards across code quality, testing, reliability, and maintainability, reducing technical debt strategically, and providinghands-on technical guidance.
• Lead the adoption of AI-first ways of working, introducing generative AI tooling into the engineering workflow and helping engineers understand and embrace their role as orchestrators in a spec-driven development environment.
• Develop multidisciplinary engineers by actively breaking down silos between front end, back end, data, and QA, building development plans that broaden capability and reduce single points of failure across the team.
• Partner with product and wider stakeholders to align engineering delivery with business priorities, communicating progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly and ensuring engineering has a credible voice in strategic conversations.

What You Will Bring (Qualifications/Experience)

• 5+ years of direct engineering management experience witha track recordof developing individuals, managing performance, hiring talent, and building high-functioning teams.
• Proven experience leading a team through a period of significant change, whether through a merger and acquisition, organisational restructure, or a turnaround from low morale and underperformance.
• Strong technical credibility with a background in software development, sufficient to guide architectural decisions, set engineering standards, and earn the genuine respect of the engineers you manage.
• A clear and well-formed point of view on the future of software engineering, including AI-first development, spec-driven workflows, and the evolving role of the engineer.
• Fluency in engineering metrics and delivery operations, with a clear understanding of the relationship between capacity, velocity, and throughput and the ability to use data to drive decisions.
• Strong communicationacross audiences, able to hold a room of engineers and a room of senior stakeholders with equal confidence, translating between technical complexity and business context.

Preferred Qualifications/Experience

• Experience in post-merger or post-acquisition engineering environments where you have rebuilt culture and operating practice from a difficult starting point.
• A demonstratedtrack recordof moving teams from siloed, specialist working towards cross-functional, multidisciplinary delivery.
• Measurable outcomes in team health, delivery predictability, or engineering effectiveness, with the data to support them.
• Experience introducing generative AI tooling into an engineering team and navigating the human side of that change alongside the technical implementation.

We understand that no candidate is perfectly qualified for any job. Experience comes in different forms; many skills are transferable; and passion goes a long way. Even more important than your resume is a clear demonstration of dedication, impact, and the ability to thrive in a fluid and collaborative environment. We want you to learn new things in this role, and we encourage you to apply if your experience is close to what we’re looking for. We also know that diversity of background and thought makes for better problem solving and more creative thinking, which is why we’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team.

We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support our recruiting process, including scheduling, candidate search, prioritization. AI does not make hiring decisions or automatically reject candidates; those decisions are made by people at SugarAI.

Benefits and Perks

• UK Pension Scheme
• Private medical and dental insurance
• Health &Wellness Reimbursement Program
• Unpaid sabbatical leave
• Educational Resources - Career & Personal Development Program
• Various discount programs (i.e. travel, virtual exercises classes, etc.)
• We are a merit-based company with many opportunities to learn, excel and grow your career!

#LI-Hybrid