Senior Engineering Manager (People Leadership + Technical Accountability)

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 350 million.

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

• Fully remote working
• Competitive salary
• Matched pension contributions
• Share options
• Vitality Private Healthcare, eyecare vouchers, and Life Assurance
• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill
• Enhanced holiday package, including:
• 28 days annual leave
• 1 day for your wedding
• 1 day off when you move house
• 30 days annual leave for your third-year anniversary
• 35 days annual leave for your tenth-year anniversary
• 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
• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface)
• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance
• Generous learning and development budget
• Regular social events
• Refer a friend, get paid