SVP Engineering

Informa Group Plc.; Abingdon; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading academic publisher is looking for a Senior Vice President of Engineering to drive a dual transformation towards a Knowledge Marketplace and AI-First Software Engineering. This pivotal role includes developing engineering strategies and managing globally distributed teams. The ideal candidate will ensure systems scalability while embedding AI in development practices to enhance productivity. Excellent commercial acumen and leadership experience are essential for fostering innovation in this dynamic business environment.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

25 days annual leave

Employee assistance programme

Private medical insurance

Share Match Plan

Qualifications

• Proven experience architecting and managing distributed systems and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience leading large-scale globally distributed engineering teams.
• Expertise in modern engineering practices with a focus on AI tools.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a comprehensive engineering strategy for a platform model.
• Ensure systems support rapid scalability and complex data ingestion.
• Champion AI embedded development practices.

Skills

AI tools and automation

Distributed Systems

Agile methodologies

TDD (Test-Driven Development)

Cloud-Native architectures

Commercial acumen

Education

Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Informa is a leading academic publishing, business intelligence, knowledge, and events business, creating unique content and connectivity for customers all over the world. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 100.

Taylor & Francis is one of the world’s largest publishers of high-quality, peer reviewed scholarly journals, books, e-books and reference works. We empower learners, thinkers and doers with trusted knowledge that advances research and enriches lives. We bring together diverse people, ideas and opinions to validate and publish the experts, theories and truths that matter. And we’ve been doing this in an unbroken arc since 1798.

Our purpose is to foster human progress through knowledge. We strongly believe that this requires us to encourage and examine different ideas and voices, so that any work that meets our exacting levels of quality deserves to be included in our publications. This requires open minds, the opportunity for robust debate, and the courage to defend perspectives that stand up to scrutiny, even if they conflict with our personal beliefs or values. Because that’s the only way to find the best obtainable version of the truth and, ultimately, foster human progress. If you agree, then we’d love to hear from you.

What we offer in return:

At Taylor & Francis we care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. You will be joining a thriving business, working alongside an exceptional group of people. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about.

Job Description

The Senior Vice President (SVP) of Engineering is a pivotal executive role, reporting into our Chief Technology & Product Officer. The role is responsible for leading the globally distributed engineering organisations through a dual transformation: evolving the business from an academic publisher to a Knowledge Marketplace, while simultaneously pivoting the technology function toward AI-First Software Engineering.

This role requires a leader who is a strategist, an expert in modern engineering, and is aware of how to embed AI across the entire software lifecycle. You will be responsible for the technology strategy that powers our marketplace, balancing the need for robust distributed systems with the agility required to experiment and grow. You will partner closely with Product leadership to co-create solutions that solve complex user problems.

The role will work to bridge geographies and time zones, championing Distributed Agile practices that allow our global teams to collaborate seamlessly. You will embed AI-assisted development (e.g., Copilot, code generation, automated refactoring) into the core of our SDLC, amplifying the productivity of our global teams and defining the future of our engineering workforce. You will champion Distributed Agile practices that bridge time zones and instill a culture of technical excellence rooted in Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Delivery.

This role demands a visionary leader who can balance technical innovation with business priorities to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage.

The Academic Publishing industry and T&F are on an exciting growth agenda; from a portfolio of separate products to an integrated platform with a focus on leveraging emerging technologies to ensure advanced substantiated knowledge is accessible and can have real world impact. This role ensures that the company achieves its long-term goals and remains competitive in a dynamic business environment.

The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a reasonable commuting distance of our office in either Milton Park Oxfordshire (OX14) or London Blackfriars to enable you to collaborate in person at least 3 days per week.

KeyResponsibilities and Accountability:

• Own the Tech Vision: Author and execute a comprehensive engineering strategy that transitions the business to a platform model. Define the architectural runway (e.g., Event-Driven Architecture, Microservices) needed to support a high-traffic, multi-sided marketplace.
• Commercial understanding of the business vision, translating this into the Engineering landscape for delivery.
• Scalability & Distributed Systems: Ensure systems are capable of complex data ingestion and high-speed retrieval. Ensure the architecture supports rapid scaling of both content (supply) and users (demand).
• Build vs. Buy: Responsible for technology decisions that balance speed-to-market with long-term ownership and differentiation.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with customers, partners, and vendors to support business objectives and drive innovation.
• Communicate technical concepts and engineering strategies effectively to non-technical stakeholders, ensuring alignment and understanding.
• Embedding AI-First Engineering: Fundamentally evolve the software creation process. Operationalize the use of AI coding assistants and increase developer effectiveness. Implement governance to ensure AI-generated code meets security and quality standards.
• Methodology Leadership: Move beyond standard Agile to true Continuous Delivery. Instill rigorous commitment to modern software engineering practices.
• DevOps & DORA Metrics: Oversee the maturity of the DevOps culture. Drive performance based on DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Time to Restore, Change Failure Rate) to ensure high-velocity, high-quality shipping.
• Legacy Modernization: Lead the strategic strangulation of legacy applications, migrating them to modern cloud-native architectures without disrupting ongoing business needs.
• Product-Minded Engineering: Act as a strategic partner to the VP of Product. Understand the "Why" behind the roadmap and ensure engineering contributes to product discovery, not just delivery.
• Commercial & Customer Focus: Bridge the gap between technical code and commercial outcomes. Ensure engineering teams understand how their technical decisions impact marketplace liquidity, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.
• Feedback Loops: Shorten the feedback loop between code-commit and customer-impact, enabling the business to test hypotheses and pivot quickly.

4. Team Development & Culture

• One Team Culture: Build a cohesive, high-performing engineering organization that eliminates "onshore vs. offshore" silos. Foster a culture where ownership and decision-making are distributed.
• Upskilling for the AI Era: Lead the cultural shift required for AI adoption. Own upskilling programs to enable engineers to adopt AI effectively across the SDLC, ensuring the team remains competitive in a rapidly changing landscape.
• Talent Magnet: Build and lead a world-class engineering organization. Attract top-tier talent with expertise in modern stacks, distributed systems and AI engineering.
• Culture of Mastery: Cultivate an environment of continuous learning (e.g., hackathons, internal tech talks). Mentor Engineering leadership to become both technical leaders and people managers.
• As a mentor and leader, you will cultivate a high-performing but inclusive engineering team, promoting a culture of hard work, high energy and fun where individuals can achieve their potential. You’ll inspire the managers that report to you to foster similar cultures within their own teams. Provide regular feedback, performance evaluations, and professional development opportunities to engineering staff.
• Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within the engineering team, creating an environment where all employees can thrive.

5. Stakeholder Collaboration

• Act as a key liaison between engineering teams and other departments, ensuring alignment and collaboration across the organization.
• Represent the engineering function in executive meetings, board discussions, and external engagements, providing insights and recommendations.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with customers, partners, and vendors to support business objectives and drive innovation.
• Communicate technical concepts and engineering strategies effectively to non-technical stakeholders, ensuring alignment and understanding.

6. Creativity and Technology Leadership

• Champion the adoption of emerging technologies, tools, and methodologies to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge. Ensuring the company stays at the cutting edge of modern technology, in line with customer aspirations of how they want to consume content.
• Foster a culture of experimentation and continuous learning within the engineering organization.
• Identify emerging industry trends, technologies, and market opportunities to inform strategic decision-making and maintain competitive advantage.

Qualifications

Experience & Knowledge

• Modern Engineering Practitioner: Proven deep, hands-on background in software engineering with a philosophy rooted in TDD, CI/CD, and Agile XP (Extreme Programming) principles. Understanding of "good" software and solutions. Crucially, you have practical experience of AI tools and understand the impact this has on productivity and code quality.
• Distributed Systems: Proven experience architecting and managing complex Distributed Systems and Cloud-Native architectures (AWS/Azure/GCP). You understand the complexities of building a multi-sided global marketplace.
• Marketplace/Platform Context: Experience building platforms that support B2B or B2C marketplaces, or complex content ecosystems, is highly desirable.
• Global Leadership: Experience leading large-scale, globally distributed engineering teams. You have a playbook for managing distributed agile at scale, handling cultural nuances, and synchronizing delivery across time zones.
• Strategic Transformation: Demonstrated history of leading engineering teams through transformations from legacy methods to modern, automated, and AI-enhanced workflows.
• Product Fluency: You speak "Product." You have experience working in a "Triad" model (Engineering, Product, Delivery) and understand how to balance technical debt reduction with feature delivery.
• Holistic business knowledge with an understanding of the operational complexities of large multinational organisations particularly of a matrix organisational structure.
• Mature and proactive attitude, with excellent judgment and problem-solving skills.
• A flexible and agile mentality able to quickly adapt and respond to changing work pressures and priorities.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills with the ability to present and drive change with stakeholders at all levels of the business.
• A curious outlook – known for asking the right questions of the right stakeholders.
• Highly collaborative, emotionally intelligent and someone people are excited to work with; also having strong personal influencing skills.
• Extremely well organised and comfortable managing a significant and varied workload across global time zones that needs constant prioritisation.
• Numerate with an ability to interpret and understand project plans, budgets, and financial targets; Ability to analyse and compile a large amount of data and come up with conclusive results.
• Commercially minded with strong financial acumen and a dedicated customer focused attitude.
• Demonstrated commercial acumen and results orientation.
• Programme management skills with a proven ability to get things done, not deterred by the changing or evolving nature of a project.

Additional Information

Location

We believe that great things happen when people connect face-to-face. That's why we work in-person with each other, or with customers and partners, three days a week or more. When you’re not spending time together in one of our offices or other workplaces – like at conference – you get the flexibility and support to work from home or remotely.

The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a reasonable commuting distance of our office in either Milton Park Oxfordshire (OX14) or London Blackfriars to enable you to collaborate in person at least 3 days per week.

What we offer in return

• An excellent work/life balance with a fantastic, flexible working culture
• 25 days annual leave per year plus a day off for your birthday
• 3 additional discretionary days off during the holiday season at the end of the year
• 4 paid volunteering days each year
• Company funded single cover private medical insurance
• Employee assistance programme – offering 24/7 well-being support
• Share Match – Plan that matches every share purchased with two free shares.
• Life assurance, plus optical and medical care

If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and make a contribution regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life.

Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit based factor.

If you have a disability, or face another barrier, and would like to request an adjustment to assist your participation in the hiring process and/or in the advertised position, please contact [e-mail]. Your request will be reviewed and considered in the strictest confidence.

We genuinely care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about. To find out more about our business and the great career opportunities please go to our Careers Site:http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/careers

Or better yet check out our LinkedIn ‘Life’ Page, highlighting our accomplishments, employees, and company culture. It’s also a good way of meeting our recruitment team, who will be happy to advise you on your journey here at T&F.

We know that sometimes the 'perfect candidate' doesn't exist, and that people can be put off applying for a job if they don't fit all the requirements. If you're excited about working for us and have most of the skills or experience we're looking for, please go ahead and apply. You could be just what we need! We believe strongly in the value of diversity and creating supportive, inclusive environments where our colleagues can succeed. As such, Informa is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, ancestry, national origin, religion, or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, citizenship, or other protected characteristics under local law. This role may also be available on a flexible working or part time basis – please ask the Talent Acquisition team for more information.