Hybrid Head of Engineering

at Kinetic

• Job title: Head of Engineering
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Azure, Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, Microservices
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

About the role

• Head of Engineering leading core product engineering for SaaS transformation in higher education. Driving innovation and team development through strategic leadership and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• **Key Responsibilities**
• **Team Leadership & Organisational Development (70%)**
• **Engineering Leadership**
• Lead, mentor, and develop engineering managers and technical leads across multiple product development teams
• Build and maintain a strong engineering culture focused on quality, innovation, continuous improvement, and customer-centricity
• Drive talent acquisition strategy and build teams capable of delivering on our SaaS and AI transformation objectives
• Establish clear career progression frameworks and development pathways for engineers at all levels
• Foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across product teams and with other departments
• **Outsourced QA Management**
• Own the relationship with our outsourced QA partner, ensuring quality standards, delivery excellence, and value optimisation
• Define quality metrics and SLAs that align with our product delivery cadence and customer expectations
• Integrate QA processes seamlessly within agile development workflows across all product teams
• Drive continuous improvement in test automation coverage and quality engineering practices
• **Cloud Operations & SRE Transition**
• Lead the evolution of the cloud operations team into a product-aligned Site Reliability Engineering function
• Champion the adoption of Infrastructure as Code practices across all environments and further uses AI technologies to automate provisioning and self healing platform services
• Integrate SRE principles into product teams, establishing service level objectives and error budgets
• Drive the operational excellence agenda while balancing development velocity with system reliability
• **Cross-Functional Collaboration**
• Partner closely with Product Management teams, CTO, and business stakeholders to align engineering delivery with business priorities
• Collaborate with Sales, Customer Experience, Professional Services, and Implementation teams to ensure smooth customer transitions to new platforms
• Work with Information Security and Compliance team to embed security-by-design principles into development processes
• Engage with Strategic Partners to enable successful platform integrations and ecosystem development
• **Technical Leadership (30%)**
• **SaaS Transformation**
• Provide technical vision and architectural guidance for the migration from on-premise and hosted solutions to true multi-tenant SaaS delivery models
• Champion best practices in cloud-native development, microservices architecture, API design and AI Software Engineering methodologies
• Ensure technical decisions support scalability, security, and operational efficiency in a SaaS context
• Drive standardisation of technology stacks and development practices across product teams where appropriate
• **AI Engineering Enablement**
• Guide the integration of AI capabilities across our product portfolio
• Establish engineering practices and infrastructure to support responsible AI development and deployment
• Build technical capability within teams to leverage AI/ML technologies effectively
• Ensure AI implementations meet regulatory requirements and ethical standards for the education sector
• **Platform Modernisation & Customer Migration**
• Oversee the technical strategy for migrating existing customers to new products and platforms working in alignment with our AI development teams
• Ensure backward compatibility and data integrity throughout migration processes
• Drive technical excellence in areas critical to our transformation: API development, data migration tooling, integration frameworks
• Balance innovation with the stability required to maintain service to 700,000+ student bedrooms
• **Technical Standards & Excellence**
• Set and maintain engineering standards for code quality, security, testing, and documentation
• Drive adoption of modern software development practices including CI/CD, automated testing, and observability
• Champion technical debt management and strategic refactoring initiatives
• Ensure compliance with ISO27001, GDPR, PCI/DSS and sector-specific requirements (e.g., HECVAT)
• **Key Focus Areas: First 18-24 Months**
• **Enablement Plan Delivery**: Drive engineering execution against our strategic enablement roadmap, ensuring teams have the capabilities, tools, and processes to deliver on SaaS and AI objectives
• **SaaS Migration Excellence**: Oversee the technical and operational aspects of our SaaS transformation, ensuring reliable, secure, and scalable delivery models
• **Customer Transition Success**: Ensure smooth migration of existing customers to new products without service disruption, maintaining our reputation for reliability
• **Team Evolution**: Build organisational capability through strategic hiring, development programs, and the integration of cloud operations into product-aligned SRE teams
• **AI Engineering Maturity**: Establish the foundations for AI-enhanced products, including development practices, infrastructure, and team capabilities
• **Operational Excellence**: Drive improvements in deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, and MTTR while maintaining ISO27001 compliance

Requirements

• **Required Experience**
• **SaaS Leadership**: Proven track record of leading engineering organisations delivering enterprise SaaS applications at scale, OR successfully leading the transformation of on-premise/hosted solutions to SaaS delivery models
• **Engineering Leadership**: 8+ years in software engineering with at least 4 years in senior leadership roles managing multiple teams and engineering managers
• **Team Building**: Demonstrated success building, scaling, and developing high-performing engineering organisations of 30+ engineers
• **Technical Depth**: Strong technical foundation with hands-on experience in cloud platforms (Azure, AWS and/or GCP), modern development practices, and enterprise software architecture
• **Complex Migrations**: Experience managing large-scale platform migrations and customer transitions with minimal disruption
• **Quality Assurance**: Experience working with both in-house and outsourced QA teams, establishing quality engineering practices
• **Cloud Operations**: Understanding of SRE principles, Infrastructure as Code, and the evolution of operations teams in product-centric organisations
• **Highly Desirable**
• Experience in highly regulated industries (education, financial services, healthcare) with compliance requirements
• Track record of integrating AI/ML capabilities into production software systems
• Experience with multi-cloud architectures and operations
• Background in enterprise software serving the education sector or similar mission-critical domains
• Experience with multi-region deployments and international customer bases
• Understanding of API-first architecture and platform ecosystem development
• Experience of AI development methodologies in legacy and new product development
• **Leadership Qualities**
• **Strategic Thinking**: Ability to translate business strategy into executable engineering roadmaps
• **Change Leadership**: Proven ability to lead organisations through significant transformation while maintaining team morale and productivity
• **Stakeholder Management**: Excellent communication and relationship-building skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels
• **Data-Driven**: Uses metrics and evidence to drive decisions, measure progress, and demonstrate value
• **Customer Focus**: Deep commitment to delivering value to customers and understanding their needs
• **Collaboration**: Natural collaborator who builds trust across organisational boundaries
• **Resilience**: Comfortable with ambiguity and able to navigate complex technical and organisational challenges
• **Integrity**: Strong ethical foundation and commitment to doing what's right for customers, team, and company

Benefits

• At Kinetic, we believe work should come with rewards that make a real difference. Here’s just a taste of what you can expect when you join us:
• 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) - with extra days the longer you’re with us
• Two paid wellbeing days each year, with a budget to enjoy some time out with someone important to you
• Enhanced pension contributions to support your future
• Two paid days a year to give back through volunteering, charity work, or sustainability projects with our Green Team
• Salary sacrifice schemes for electric vehicles and cycle-to-work
• 24/7 access to our Employee Assistance Programme for confidential advice and support
• A full annual health check to keep you at your best
• A flexible benefits platform - from life assurance and learning opportunities to retail discounts and cinema tickets
• A genuine people-first culture where your growth and wellbeing come first
• Performance-related bonus scheme to reward your contribution
• Regular socials - from team get-togethers to all-company celebrations, with each department owning a budget for their events
• The opportunity to attend group conferences, away days and learning forums both in the UK and abroad - network with other talent
• We’ve created a welcoming office environment, with well-stocked kitchens offering free breakfast, fresh fruit, hot and cold drinks, and a range of tuck shop goodies to keep you fuelled throughout the day.