Manchester-Based Contract Engineering Manager – Lead & Architect

Randstad Digital UK; Manchester; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Randstad Digital UK in Manchester is seeking a contract Engineering Manager to lead and coach multiple software teams, focusing on high engagement, performance, and operational excellence.

You will oversee project execution, drive architectural quality, manage production operations, and partner with product and design teams to meet business goals. Initially, you will manage contractor teams with emphasis on delivery and collaboration.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum 5+ years of hands-on experience managing software development teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead 1–3 engineering teams (5–8 engineers per team) and track health, roadmap progress, and KPIs.
• Coach engineers, set expectations, and address underperformance with HR.
• Own system architecture, drive deployments and operations, reduce risks with documentation.
• Oversee incident response, postmortems, and maintain high code quality; participate in on-call.
• Identify bottlenecks, improve development workflows, and communicate updates to stakeholders.

Skills

Team leadership

People coaching

System architecture

Incident management

Continuous improvement

Stakeholder communication

CI/CD

Cloud technologies

Production monitoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud platforms

Production monitoring

Job description

Randstad Digital UK in Manchester is seeking a contract Engineering Manager to lead and coach multiple software teams, focusing on high engagement, performance, and operational excellence.

You will oversee project execution, drive architectural quality, manage production operations, and partner with product and design teams to meet business goals. Initially, you will manage contractor teams with emphasis on delivery and collaboration.