Value Stream Engineering Lead

The AA; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Cash car allowance

Private medical insurance

25 days’ annual leave + bank holidays

Up to 7% employer pension contribution

Breakdown membership

Job summary

The AA in London is seeking a Value Stream Engineering Lead to join the CTO Engineering team, reporting to the Head of Engineering. You’ll lead the engineering capability within a Value Stream, aligning teams to business outcomes and delivering high-quality, scalable technology.

This is a hybrid role with 3 office days per week in London. You’ll balance hands-on technical leadership with people management, coaching permanent and partner engineers, shaping architecture and engineering practices,

Qualifications

• Extensive software engineering experience across design, development, testing and deployment.
• Proven experience leading engineering teams within complex digital environments.
• Strong hands-on engineering across SDLC including Java/Spring Boot and modern frontend (Angular/React).
• Experience designing, building and operating scalable microservices and API integrations.
• Knowledge of DevOps practices, CI/CD, observability, IaC, and secure design.
• Cloud native engineering across AWS/Azure/Google Cloud.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering teams across the Value Stream, setting clear technical direction and ensuring engineering priorities and delivery remain aligned to business and customer outcomes.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership across solution design, architecture, code level problem solving and production debugging, helping teams navigate complex engineering and delivery challenges.
• Champion modern software engineering practices across code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, performance, security and resilient system design.
• Drive continuous improvement across the engineering lifecycle, using Agile, DevOps, automation and value stream principles to improve quality, efficiency, flow and speed of delivery.
• Build, coach and develop high performing engineering teams across permanent and partner resources, creating a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, accountability and continuous learning.
• Partner closely with Product, Architecture and other technology leaders to ensure solutions are scalable and sustainable, while identifying and resolving technical dependencies, risks and impediments across the Value Stream.

Skills

Java & Spring Boot

Angular & React

Microservices & distributed systems

CI/CD & DevOps

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GC)

Leadership & mentoring

Education

Relevant professional or technical qualifications

Job description

Location: London (Hybrid working, 3 office days per week)

Employment Type: Permanent, Full Time

Why Join Us?

• Annual bonus, cash car allowance and private medical insurance
• Shape and embed The AA’s critical data governance operating model across a large, complex organisation
• Build a meaningful Group wide capability with strong executive sponsorship and the opportunity to influence how data is governed from an early stage
• Play a key role in ensuring trusted, high-quality data supports better decision making, customer outcomes and our growing Data and AI ambitions

For over a century, The AA has been keeping Britain moving. Today, millions of drivers trust us to be there when it matters most, and we're equally committed to supporting the people who make that possible. With a 4.5-star Glassdoor rating, we've built a culture where colleagues are empowered to grow, collaborate and make a real impact for our customers on every journey. Which has been recognised by Sunday Times “Best Places to Work” for the last two years.

Job Description

This is the Job

We’re looking for a Value Stream Engineering Lead to join our CTO Engineering team, reporting into the Head of Engineering.

You’ll lead the engineering capability within a Value Stream, ensuring teams are aligned to business and customer outcomes while driving the delivery of high quality, resilient technology. Combining strong engineering leadership with an understanding of end to end delivery, you’ll help teams improve flow, remove impediments and continuously evolve engineering practices across the Value Stream.

This is a technical leadership role where staying close to the engineering is important. Alongside leading and developing a blend of permanent and partner engineering teams, you’ll provide hands on technical leadership when needed, contributing to solution design, reviewing architecture and code, supporting production debugging and coaching teams through complex engineering challenges. You’ll champion technical excellence while ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable, secure and commercially effective.

What You’ll Do

• Lead engineering teams across the Value Stream, setting clear technical direction and ensuring engineering priorities and delivery remain aligned to business and customer outcomes.
• Provide hands on technical leadership across solution design, architecture, code level problem solving and production debugging, helping teams navigate complex engineering and delivery challenges.
• Champion modern software engineering practices across code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, performance, security and resilient system design.
• Drive continuous improvement across the engineering lifecycle, using Agile, DevOps, automation and value stream principles to improve quality, efficiency, flow and speed of delivery.
• Build, coach and develop high performing engineering teams across permanent and partner resources, creating a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, accountability and continuous learning.
• Partner closely with Product, Architecture and other technology leaders to ensure solutions are scalable and sustainable, while identifying and resolving technical dependencies, risks and impediments across the Value Stream.

What You’ll Bring

• Extensive software engineering experience across design, development, testing and deployment, alongside proven experience leading engineering teams within complex digital environments.
• Strong hands on engineering expertise across the software development lifecycle, including Java and Spring Boot, alongside modern frontend technologies such as Angular and React.
• Experience designing, building and operating scalable microservices based platforms, with a strong understanding of event driven architecture, asynchronous messaging, distributed systems and API integration.
• Strong knowledge of modern engineering and DevOps practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, infrastructure as code, performance optimisation and secure, resilient software design.
• Cloud native engineering experience across platforms such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, with sufficient technical depth to review designs, interrogate code, troubleshoot production issues and contribute directly to engineering solutions when required.
• Proven leadership across cross functional and blended permanent and partner teams, with the ability to coach engineers, influence senior stakeholders and translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes.

Nice to Have

• Experience using value stream mapping or analysis to identify bottlenecks and improve engineering flow and delivery effectiveness.
• Experience working across complex digital platforms spanning backend services, frontend applications, mobile experiences, integrations and cloud infrastructure.
• Relevant professional or technical qualifications.

Additional Information

Belonging at The AA

At The AA, we value the unique perspectives, experiences and ideas that our people bring. We've nurtured a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected and empowered to do their best work.

Through our employee communities and inclusion initiatives, we’ve created opportunities for people to connect, share experiences and influence positive change across the business. This is a place where your voice matters and where you can belong, grow and succeed.

Driven by People, Rewarded by Benefits

We believe in rewarding our people. That's why we offer a comprehensive benefits package including;

• 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, the option to buy additional holiday
• Up to 7% employer pension contribution
• Free AA breakdown membership from Day One with 50% discount for family and friends, discounts on AA products including car and home insurance
• 24/7 GP access and wellbeing support for you and your family
• A wide range of employee discounts, including our popular car salary sacrifice scheme