**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.
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