Engineering Lead

Scope of Role

As an Engineering Lead, you will play a pivotal role in leading our software engineering team and influencing our technical strategy. You will bridge the gap between the Engineering team, product team and senior leadership, ensuring seamless communication, supporting the ongoing evolvement of the product roadmap and alignment with business goals. Your strong interpersonal skills will be essential in mentoring and supporting developers, fostering a positive and productive team culture.

• Product Delivery: Collaborate with Product, Product Delivery, and the Leadership team to deliver customer-driven features in alignment with the product roadmap. Supporting the prioritisation of Product features based on a complexity vs value matrix; refining work into technical deliverables and informing Product planning.
• Communication: Act as a bridge between the technical team and senior leadership, effectively communicating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Maintain and prioritize the technical debt backlog, ensuring alignment with the SLT and inclusion in the Product Roadmap. 
• Proactively promote new technology, where customer value can be derived, so that Dealer Auction is able to capitalize on new capabilities.
• Strategic Planning: Collaborate with senior leadership across Auto Trader and Cox Automotive to help define and drive our technology strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and that the services that underpin Dealer Auctions platform remain secure with key dependencies understood and managed appropriately.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of software developers, fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment. Enhance engineering capabilities and processes to support demand and attract talent. 
• Technical Supplier Management: Engage with internal/external suppliers and customers for solution, service, integration, and delivery planning. 
• Continuous Improvement: Stay up to date with industry trends and best practices and methodologies advocating for continuous improvement in the team.

Objectives for Role: 

• Deliver software and products that support business strategy 
• Implement best practices and innovative engineering strategies to improve business performance 
• Ensure software quality, timely delivery, and adherence to financial targets 
• Manage and recruit the Software Engineering team to meet current and future demands 
• Identify and implement leading-edge software and technology solutions 
• Ensure adherence to business and parent companies' security policies 
• Triage and troubleshoot live issues, providing out-of-hours support. 
• Manage resource allocation and staffing to meet project timelines and budget constraints. 
• Foster effective communication and collaboration across departments. 
• Maintain high standards of software quality, including automated testing and continuous improvement. 

Skills, Knowledge, and Experience: 

• Proven experience as a lead developer or similar within a software engineering team and experience managing distributed teams. 

• Capable of inspiring and motivating at all levels. With the ability to lead and mentor a team, fostering a positive and productive work environment.

• Experience in performance management and managing third-party suppliers. 
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to think strategically and align technology initiatives with business goals.
• Problem-Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a proactive approach to identifying and addressing challenges.
• Interpersonal Skills: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build strong relationships with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Technical Skills: 

• Comprehensive understanding of the Software Delivery Lifecycle and agile methodologies. 
• Experience with modern front-end frameworks such as Angular or React and technologies such as Java, Kotlin, TypeScript, GCP, AWS, Snowflake, and Postgres. 
• Knowledge of modern cloud architecture and engineering practices.