Software Engineering Manager

We are building a next-generation platform for one of the UK's leading financial services providers - trusted by over 2 million clients and managing c.£150 billion in assets. This is a unique opportunity to shape technology that will transform how people invest and achieve financial freedom. We are looking for a Software Engineering Manager to lead and grow our Dealing Journeys squad, delivering critical capabilities at the heart of the investment experience. You will join our Trading Tribe - a domain responsible for end-to-end client journeys, from pre-trade decision-making through order placement to trade execution, ensuring fast, reliable, and seamless investing experiences at scale. In this role, you will work with modern technologies including React and React Native, building distributed, highly available systems on AWS. You will play a key role in fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement, while guiding your team through complex technical and product challenges with clarity and purpose. By joining us, you will help deliver innovative, scalable solutions that make investing simpler and more accessible to millions of users across the UK. Be part of HL's future. Be part of the future of investing. Shape it with us.

What you'll do

As an Engineering Manager, you will lead across four core areas: people, delivery, technical decision-making, and strategic alignment. You will act as a key bridge between engineering and the business, ensuring that technical direction supports product outcomes and client needs. While this is not a hands-on coding role, a strong technical foundation is essential to effectively guide your team and shape solutions.

• Co-own the product roadmap with your Product Manager, defining clear outcomes, shaping scope, and making data-informed trade-offs across value, effort, and risk.

• Drive technical decision-making by setting engineering standards, guiding architecture, and reviewing solutions across web and mobile (React / React Native) applications.

• Forecast delivery using capacity and flow metrics, communicating timelines, dependencies, and risks early and transparently.

• Establish engineering guardrails across scope, quality, and non-functional requirements, enabling teams to design optimal solutions within them.

• Champion observability and operational excellence, ensuring system health, SLOs, and alerting are visible and actively managed.

• Partner with Tech Leads and Architects on system design and evolution, bringing structured thinking to complex, distributed environments.

• Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement, helping teams navigate technical and product challenges with clarity and purpose.

• Grow and develop engineers through coaching, feedback, hiring, and creating an environment that supports autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

• Remove blockers, drive cross-functional alignment, and maintain a sustainable, predictable delivery cadence.

What you bring

• Extensive experience building full‑stack applications, with experience of leading engineering teams.

• Strong technical background across frontend, mobile, and backend systems, including React, React Native, and modern API-driven architectures.

• Solid experience with AWS and cloud-native platforms (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes), with a focus on scalability, resilience, and distributed systems.

• Good understanding of full‑stack architecture, including API design and integration, performance optimisation, security, and microservice or event-driven patterns.

• Experience with CI/CD, modern development workflows, and observability practices.

• Proven track record of leading high-performing teams in fast-paced, complex or regulated environments.

• Passion for mentoring and developing engineers through coaching, feedback, and code reviews, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

• Ability to connect engineering, product, and business needs to deliver seamless, end-to-end client journeys.

• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and leadership skills, with the ability to influence and build alignment across teams.