We have an exciting opportunity for a Software Engineering Manager within our digital hub in London. Are you a technologist at heart? Do you love to help engineers reach their career goals? Do you hav...

Software Engineering Manager (Microservices) | Holborn | Permanent

We are proud of our tech stack, which gives our engineers the opportunity to build products and services using Java, Microservices architecture, Spring Boot, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Angular, Kubernetes, Docker, Jenkins, Amazon Web Services, Android (Kotlin), iOS (Swift).

You will be responsible for managing one of our engineering communities (back end/microservices) and driving technical advancements on the Premier Inn and Restaurants digital sales channels and technology platforms. 

About Whitbread:

What continues to set us apart are our excellent products and people. In Premier Inn, we have the UK’s favourite budget hotel chain, currently outperforming the market and ambitious for more as we execute our plans in both the UK and Germany. We have much loved brands such as Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Bar + Block alongside exciting up and coming propositions such as Cookhouse & Pub.

We remain true to our values and put our people at the centre of everything we do. Throughout this crisis we a proud to have supported our nations Key Workers by providing accommodation throughout the pandemic. 

What you will be doing to contribute

• Create and maintain ways of working that inspire our engineers to realise their potential through every step of their career progression, helping them demonstrate this through ever increasing output in creativity, delivery, quality and overall professionalism. 
• Identify your community members' unique personality and skills mix, leveraging this with the delivery managers to build delivery teams that not only have the right mix of technical skills but the right mix of personalities to crate highly motivated, high output delivery teams. 
• Be a technical Product Manager as much as a line manager, overseeing the technical direction that your engineering community is responsible for, creating and maintaining technical backlogs to drive technical upkeep and enhancements/upgrades alongside the more direct business initiatives 
• Lead by example and not execution, developing engineers to step forward and take the lead through your mentorship, preparing them for engineering management or wider roles within Digital. 
• Push the boundaries of what we believe good looks like through leading Digital management initiatives, driving improvements across people, processes and systems. 
• Hate to fail but not scared to do so either and you will instil this into the teams you manage and support it in your management peers. 
• Work with Digital delivery to identify right resources for the right project/task required to successfully deliver the product roadmap 
• Work in collaboration with Architecture, delivery and Product resources to understand the key commercial implications of delivery, to understand business drivers and roadmaps as well as any enterprise-level technical constraints 
• Work closely with the Architecture and delivery resources to introduce and Promote solutions and tools that will improve the Premier Inn Digital Product, Delivery and Quality 
• Line manage and lead a team of engineers, accountable for technology standards and communities of practise in a high performance, fast-paced, delivery focussed environment  
• Identify stretch projects and development opportunities to help individuals achieve their goals. 
• Hold regular catch-ups and performance conversations with the team, providing frequent feedback for continuous improvement and addressing poor performance. 
• Accountable for ensuring team members are fully equipped to meet the demands of a total ownership, DevOps culture 
• Work with the delivery managers, develop agile adoption strategy, designing a strategy for the organisational adoption of agile within their areas of remit. Sustaining Agile methodologies and continually offering strategies for improvement, as well as developing and executing a communications strategy for their given area 
• Manage budgets for relevant areas, working the delivery managers to create a complete report for Digital Delivery to include capex, revex and forecast against budget information. 

Required skills and experience

• Experience managing high-performing software engineers (Microservices/Back End) 
• Comfortable managing team members with different skill sets and technical areas of focus  
• Empathetic leadership style  
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices, including SCM, build configuration and processes, code quality, testing practices and operations 
• Have a strong understanding of system design and software architecture. Must be able to engage in meaningful conversations with engineers, architects and the Senior Engineer Manager in terms of how we should design systems 
• Experience of Agile development using continuous integration principles 
• Ability to coordinate build activities across multiple systems and understand how to undertake and support testing activities.  
• Ability to quickly comprehend new technical topics and help refine technical roadmaps and strategies 

Whitbread is an inclusive employer. We believe that everyone is unique and there should be no barriers to entry and no limits to ambition. We welcome your application whatever your background or situation. Under-represented groups such as women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities & members of the LGBTQ+ community (those who identify as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans sexual, non binary or use another term), are strongly encouraged to build a career with us. We are open to part-time and flexible working and, where possible, will try to support this.