Software Engineering Manager, SugarAI

• 5+ years of direct engineering management experience with a track record of developing individuals, managing performance, hiring talent, and building high-functioning teams
• Proven experience leading a team through a period of significant change, whether through a merger and acquisition, organisational restructure, or a turnaround from low morale and underperformance
• Strong technical credibility with a background in software development, sufficient to guide architectural decisions, set engineering standards, and earn the genuine respect of the engineers you manage
• A clear and well-formed point of view on the future of software engineering, including AI-first development, spec-driven workflows, and the evolving role of the engineer
• Fluency in engineering metrics and delivery operations, with a clear understanding of the relationship between capacity, velocity, and throughput and the ability to use data to drive decisions
• Strong communication across audiences, able to hold a room of engineers and a room of senior stakeholders with equal confidence, translating between technical complexity and business context
• Experience introducing generative AI tooling into an engineering team and navigating the human side of that change alongside the technical implementation

Desirable

• We are looking for an Engineering Manager who is a genuine thought leader, someone who can see where software engineering is heading, articulate that future with conviction to their team, and set the pace for getting there. The engineers you will lead are talented people who have been through a period of significant change. They are ready for someone who will invest in them, set a clear direction, and give them something worth building towards
• Your mandate is threefold. First, rebuild a team that has been through a difficult transition and restore their confidence, drive, and sense of purpose. Second, champion an AI-first engineering culture where spec-driven development and generative AI tooling become the standard way of working. Third, lead the shift away from siloed specialists towards multidisciplinary engineers who think and contribute across the full stack
• This is not a hands-on engineering role. It is a systems and people building one. You will be defining how this team operates, how it grows, and what it stands for. The decisions you make in the first 6 months will shape the engineering organisation for years to come. If you are energised by rebuilding, clear-eyed about the future of engineering, and ready to set a new standard, we would like to speak with you
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of software engineers through structured 1:1s, career development planning, performance feedback, and clearly set expectations, owning the full people management cycle including goal-setting, reviews, promotions, and compensation conversations
• Rebuild team culture from the ground up, establishing psychological safety, accountability, and a genuine appetite for continuous improvement, identifying root causes of underperformance rather than addressing symptoms
• Own delivery by introducing and maintaining effective operating rhythms, removing blockers systematically, and bringing rigour to planning and sprint health using metrics including velocity, cycle time, throughput, and defect rates
• Be the technical conscience of the team, setting and enforcing engineering standards across code quality, testing, reliability, and maintainability, reducing technical debt strategically, and providing hands-on technical guidance
• Lead the adoption of AI-first ways of working, introducing generative AI tooling into the engineering workflow and helping engineers understand and embrace their role as orchestrators in a spec-driven development environment
• Develop multidisciplinary engineers by actively breaking down silos between front end, back end, data, and QA, building development plans that broaden capability and reduce single points of failure across the team
• Partner with product and wider stakeholders to align engineering delivery with business priorities, communicating progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly and ensuring engineering has a credible voice in strategic conversations