Senior Engineering Manager

The Job in short

In this key leadership position, you will lead a best-in-class, cross-functional team of software engineers. Along with leading and growing the team, you define and promote the team's ways of working, hiring, and training strategies.

You are responsible for a balanced development team that delivers what they promise. You make sure that the team is set up for high performance, has a clear product plan, and delivers software that meets the expectations of our customers taking all the non-functionals like security, performance, maintainability, reliability into account as well.

You actively drive the team to get feedback from all stakeholders across Backbase and where needed you will take action. You are responsible for and help the team set out the strategic direction and are an instrumental facilitator in reaching the goals we set out to accomplish.

Meet the job

As an Engineering Manager, you will be leading up to three development teams within our R&D organisation, together with the value stream leadership team, product managers, domain architects, and other key stakeholders. You contribute directly to the delivery of the products within the value stream that are used by our global customers and will have an impact on the 100+ million end-customers they serve on a daily basis.

Team & People Management - The most important part of your job - the people in your team! Together you will work with them towards an environment in which each individual improves both soft- and strong engineering skills. Together you create the conditions in which the development teams can deliver features that respect the high expectations on e.g. quality from our customers. You will manage up to 3 cross-functional development teams of software engineers, responsible for the right setup, the right competences and energized team dynamics -in line with our Backbase values. On a day-to-day basis you work closely with your team to surface any anti-pattern or dysfunction that impacts the team’s performance and ensures the team works towards solving those.

Delivery Management - You will own the delivery commitment of the team and together with the team make sure to deliver what has been promised. Important is that you keep key technology stakeholders involved and informed when and where needed. You will always protect and support your team to make sure they deliver up to the quality standards our customers expect from us. Together with the Product Owners, you make sure realistic commitments are given by e.g. advocating Lean Agile Development Principles. Of course, software delivered by your teams is released with minimal effort and does not have any issues on production. And if that is not the case yet for your development team? You should know what to do! 

Engineering Management - As Engineering Manager you balance key aspects of the software development lifecycle for your development teams. From adhering to non-functional requirements, automated releases, ensuring quality, coding standards, automation, integration testing, release acceptance validation, security, infrastructure, all the way up to understanding all the little details of the product domain within your value stream. You will ensure to build strong craftsmanship and effective processes for your team optimizing quality, predictability and output as that is our way to stay ahead of our competitors and serve our customers best.

Celebrations - You understand the importance of decompressing and building social cohesion in the team, and know when to celebrate milestones, small or big, individual or at team level.

How about you?

• You are a high energy team player, always constructive and passionate about software development and delivery and get a kick when your development team exceeds your expectations;
• You have at least 5 years of hands-on software development experience of which at least 2 years at Principal or Architecture level;
• You have a minimum of 2 years of experience in leading multi-disciplinary Agile development teams (minimum 2 teams of 6 - 10 engineers), preferably in a product company and banking, payments and SaaS experience is definitely a plus; 
• You have rock solid understanding and experience with agile software development practises like scrum, kanban or SAFe; 
• Technical practices like continuous integration, automated testing, release management, performance monitoring and applicable tooling such as Atlassian, Git, etc. are part of your standard day-to-day thinking;
• You have the ability to prioritize and plan effectively with a demonstrated ability to work well under pressure and in ambiguity. You thrive in a fast-paced environment and stay flexible and adaptable to growth and change;
• You have a strong ability to persuade, inspire and motivate others. You easily navigate stakeholders across Backbase, from 1-to-1s with your team members to working directly with senior leadership and of course excellent English speaking, writing and presentation skills;
• Experience with setting up new development teams, including hiring, team line-up and onboarding/training strategies is a plus;
• You are street smart and digital savvy. A true team player with a sense of humor, hands-on and self-motivated, able to drive progress and hit deadlines;
• You have solid prior career experience as a software engineer, giving you sufficient technology skills to interact with your technical colleagues;
• You drive the delivery within the development team so that we can meet our commitments;
• You have strong Agile project management skills and the ability to act decisively. Comfortable working across departments, time zones and multiple cultures;
• You are a natural coach, through effective questioning you guide self-evaluation of performance, help our teams diagnose areas for improvement and own the solution. You will be measured on team output and employee happiness;
• You naturally collaborate and generate a positive spirit of cooperation while coordinating diverse activities and groups within a team environment.