Engineering Manager (12-month FTC)
$80,000–$120,000 year
On-siteSouthampton, England, United Kingdom
Job Summary
Directly manage engineers across AI Brain and Admin Experience pods, guiding work, estimations, and removing blockers while acting as the first escalation point. Actively participate in technical work using AI-assisted and agentic development tools, building hands-on AI skills alongside the team to shape AI-native ways of working throughout the SDLC. Collaborate with Product Managers and tech leads to coach on technical contributions and roadmap alignment, standardizing core processes like agile ceremonies and code quality while maintaining pod autonomy. Own delivery and quality metrics for pods, aligning teams to company objectives through transparent, measurable OKRs. Proactively track engineer well-being, recognize milestones to build morale, and report systemic issues to address burnout. This fixed-term role supports Benifex's shift toward smaller, pod-based AI-native engineering teams, helping define AI-native engineering leadership for the organization.
Required Qualifications
- Background in world-class product/tech organisations (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Uber, Booking.com) or high-growth startups (e.g. Monzo, N26, Personio)
- Experience operating in AI first pod-style team structures
- Demonstrable, evidenced ability building and leading high-calibre engineering teams
- Experience leading engineering teams working on Generative AI (Prompt Engineering, Fine Tuning, RAG)
- Evidenced experience leading engineering teams through AI-assisted or agentic development adoption
- Comfortable being hands-on with modern AI tooling yourself, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, RAG, or building/configuring agents and skills
- A track record of owning and improving specific engineering KPIs
- Understanding Technical Requirements with a Focus on Quality
- People Management: Ability to motivate, provide constructive feedback, manage performance, and resolve interpersonal conflicts within a team
- Agile Expertise: Experience implementing and iterating on Agile processes (like Scrum or Kanban) including task breakdown, estimation, and sprint planning
- Collaborative and Empathetic: Possesses strong communication skills and builds positive relationships with engineers, focusing on understanding their motivations and work styles
- Quality Champion: Intrinsically motivated to produce high-quality code and instills a focus on maintainability, testing, and code standards within the team
- Results-Driven and Process-Oriented: Able to balance adherence to Agile methodologies and delivery timelines with a focus on continuous improvement
- Familiar with using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to set measurable goals
- Passion for Product - You care about WHY we are building product and the value it brings to users and HOW we build product in terms of quality and standards
- Must be based in the UK or Ireland
- Must be able to lift 50 lbs
Desired Qualifications
- Ideally including experience operating in AI first pod-style team structures
- A genuine change leader, comfortable guiding a team through real ambiguity and transformation, both the AI-driven shift and the organisational change that comes with a quickly accelerating, scaling business
- Genuine appetite to be a pioneer in engineering leadership, excited to help define this way of working, not just adopt existing playbooks
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