Engineering Director

• Lead an organization of 7+ teams to deliver high-impact results, directly managing Engineering Managers and Staff Engineers.
• Foster a culture of mentorship and coaching, focusing on the professional growth and leadership capabilities of your direct reports.
• Partner with Product Directors and VPs to align roadmaps with commercial goals, customer needs and technical strategy.
• Contribute to the maturity of the entire engineering function, collaborating with peers and leading by example, such as leverage the best of the shifting AI landscape
• Instill a "customer outcome" mindset, ensuring teams are solving the right problems rather than just shipping features.
• Balance the value of commercial delivery with the necessity of managing support, technical debt, and architectural risks.
• Navigate and resolve issues pragmatically, providing clarity and direction to your teams when paths are unclear.
• Oversee the holistic health of your teams through effective use of data to drive tangible improvements
• Serve as a point of escalation for issues and incidents across your teams, ensuring sustainable preventative measures and post-mortem learning.
• Support and input into our strategic direction, providing a technical perspective for investment planning and scenario modeling.

• Exceptional people management experience, with a proven track record of managing and growing managers and Senior individual contributors
• Extensive experience leading multiple teams whilst collaborating with peers on standardised ways of working and organizational growth.
• Demonstrable examples of using data and metrics as a "carrot" for continuous improvement rather than a "stick" for management.
• Proven ability to partner with and effectively challenge Product leaders to balance commercial value with technical sustainability.
• Examples of operating with a sense of urgency, coupled with the ability to thrive in a high-autonomy, high-ambiguity environment.
• Real world experience of leading teams through organizational shifts, process changes, or rapid scaling challenges.
• Demonstrated success in building high performance engineering teams, without losing speed or autonomy.
• Expert communication skills, capable of advocating for technical excellence, building credibility with engineers and "challenging upward" to influence direction.
• A strong foundation/background in modern software architecture, with the ability to maintain technical credibility and trust with senior individual contributors.
• An understanding of how AI-first engineering will change the SDLC and how to lead through change where there is no playbook, ideally with examples

1. Phone screen
2. 1st stage
3. 2nd stage

We are committed to a fair and comfortable recruitment process, so if you require any reasonable adjustments during your application or interview process, please reach out to a member of the team at careers@arbor-education.com.

Our commitment is also backed by our partnership with Neurodiversity Consultancy, Lexxic who provide us with training, support and advice. 

Our goal is for Arbor to be a workplace which represents, celebrates and supports people from all backgrounds, and which gives them the tools they need to thrive - whatever their ambitions may be so we support and promote diversity and equality, and actively  encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. 

Know someone else who would be good for this role? You can refer a friend, family member or colleague, if they are offered a role with Arbor, we will say thank you with a voucher valued up to £200! Simply email: careers@arbor-education.com 

Please note: We are unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.