Technical Engineering Manager

Carwow; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Competitive salary

Matched pension

Share options

Private healthcare

Life assurance

Coaching sessions

Holiday entitlement

Work from abroad

Job summary

Carwow is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to co-own the roadmap with the Product Manager and lead a close-knit engineering team. You’ll balance delivery, quality and technical health while maintaining hands-on technical accountability.

You’ll have a track record of delivering outcomes in a product-led environment, manage hiring and budget, and drive SLOs and AI tooling adoption. This role is hybrid, London-based, offering a generous compensation package and benefits.

Qualifications

• Previous experience managing engineers, ideally within a product-led organisation.
• A track record of owning delivery outcomes, not just team happiness and process.
• Comfort holding both the people and technical threads of a team at once.
• Experience (or real enthusiasm for) hiring, budget ownership, and operational metrics like SLOs.

Responsibilities

• Co-own the roadmap with your Product Manager, balancing delivery, quality and technical health as genuine equals.
• Own delivery health for your team - predictability, throughput and the quality of what ships.
• Hold technical accountability by default. Ownership of technical quality of the teams work, including architecture and SLOs
• Stay close to the codebase so you can make informed calls on technical trade-offs, risk and quality.
• Read code, review PRs and pair-programme regularly, both to maintain technical quality and to mentor engineers.
• Manage, coach and develop the engineers on your team, and own hiring from sourcing through to close.
• Set and track team-level goals in partnership with your direct reports.
• Own your team's budget, including software spend and headcount planning.
• Own SLOs and operational health for the systems your team is responsible for.
• Drive adoption of AI tooling and practices within your team.

Skills

People leadership

Delivery ownership

Hiring experience

Budget ownership

SLOs

Code reading

Pair programming

PR reviews

Job description

OUR MISSION

To become the car-changing destination of choice. By combining technology, media and deep automotive expertise, we've turned how people buy, sell, advertise and lease cars on its head.

What started as a simple reviews site is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe. Last year alone we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia - creators of AutoExpress and Evo magazines - doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with almost 10m subscribers and over 1.1 billion annual views, while we sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350million.

And we’re a long way from done!
THE ROLE

You'll co-own the roadmap with the Product Manager and you'll specifically own delivery health and technical outcomes. The role combines people leadership with hands-on technical accountability.

• Reports to - Head of Engineering / Director of Engineering

• Team span - 1 Engineering Team

• Works closely with - Product Manager (equal counterpart on the team)

• Role type - Full-time, people leadership with hands-on technical accountability

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Co-own the roadmap with your Product Manager, balancing delivery, quality and technical health as genuine equals.

• Own delivery health for your team - predictability, throughput and the quality of what ships.

• Hold technical accountability by default. Ownership of technical quality of the teams work, including architecture and SLOs

• Stay close to the codebase so you can make informed calls on technical trade-offs, risk and quality.

• Read code, review PRs and pair-programme regularly, both to maintain technical quality and to mentor engineers.

• Manage, coach and develop the engineers on your team, and own hiring from sourcing through to close.

• Set and track team-level goals in partnership with your direct reports.

• Own your team's budget, including software spend and headcount planning.

• Own SLOs and operational health for the systems your team is responsible for.

• Drive adoption of AI tooling and practices within your team.

REQUIREMENTS - TECHNICAL BAR

• Read and understand code across the team's primary stack.

• Pair-programme effectively with engineers on real work.

• Review pull requests with meaningful, technically credible feedback.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• Previous experience managing engineers, ideally within a product-led organisation.

• A track record of owning delivery outcomes, not just team happiness and process.

• Comfort holding both the people and technical threads of a team at once.

• Experience (or real enthusiasm for) hiring, budget ownership, and operational metrics like SLOs.

SUCCESS IN THE ROLE

• Your team ships predictably, and you can speak to technical trade-offs as fluently as delivery ones.

• Engineers on your team are growing, well-supported, and clear on how they're doing.

• Your roadmap decisions hold up because you and your PM are genuinely aligned

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Hybrid working

• Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali

• Matched pension contributions for a peaceful retirement

• Share options - when we thrive, so do you!

• Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind, plus eyecare vouchers

• Life Assurance for (even more) peace of mind

• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner

• Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays

  • 28 days annual leave

  • 1 day for your wedding

  • 1 day off when you move house - because moving is hard enough without work!

  • For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year

  • For your tenth year anniversary, get 35 days of annual leave per year

  • Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year

• Work from abroad for a month

• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies

• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones

• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents

• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about

• Generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft

• Regular social events: tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, lunch 8 learns, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for

• Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.