Location: Hybrid – Bedfordview
Employment Type: Permanent
Industry: Insurance | Software Engineering | Technology Leadership
WatersEdge Solutions is partnering with a client to recruit a hands-on Head of Software Engineering to lead and mature the full software development lifecycle across internal business systems and customer-facing applications. This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who can balance people leadership with active engineering involvement in a .NET / C# environment.
About the Role
As Head of Software Engineering, you will own the SDLC from planning through development, QA, release, and application support. You’ll lead a team of approximately 12, including developers, test engineers, a scrum master, and an implementation specialist, while remaining hands-on with code reviews, standards, automation, DevOps practices, and technical direction.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the full SDLC across planning, development, QA, release, and support
- Establish repeatable, well-documented engineering processes
- Provide clear reporting on delivery, quality, and support metrics
- Drive Agile/Scrum delivery with effective, outcome-focused ceremonies
- Design and improve CI/CD pipelines for build, integration, and deployment
- Mature release management with rollback capability and change control
- Introduce infrastructure-as-code, environment standardisation, and configuration management
- Champion DevOps culture, automation, and shared ownership
- Define and implement test strategy across unit, integration, regression, and automated testing
- Own production reliability, incident response, root-cause analysis, monitoring, and alerting
- Manage, mentor, and grow the engineering team while protecting a healthy team culture
- Align delivery priorities with business stakeholders across internal and customer-facing systems
What You’ll Bring
- 9+ years in software development with progression into technical leadership
- Deep current expertise in the .NET / C# ecosystem
- Proven experience building mature SDLC processes from an immature baseline
- Strong DevOps background, including CI/CD, release automation, and configuration management
- Experience defining and implementing test strategy, unit testing, and test automation
- Experience owning production application support, incident management, and reliability practices
- Strong people leadership experience, including building, managing, developing, and retaining engineering teams
- Comfortable remaining hands-on through code reviews, automation prototyping, and technical leadership
Nice to Have
- Cloud experience, especially leading or planning cloud migrations
- Experience modernising legacy systems
- Containerisation experience
- Exposure to internal line-of-business systems and external customer-facing products
- Azure, Azure DevOps, or Kubernetes certifications
- Familiarity with observability tooling and SRE-style reliability practices
What’s On Offer
- Senior leadership opportunity with full SDLC ownership
- Hybrid working model based in Bedfordview
- Opportunity to shape engineering standards, automation, and DevOps culture
- Scope to lead both legacy modernisation and modern product delivery
- Chance to mentor and grow a strong technical team
Company Culture
This is a business that values strong team culture, accountability, and technical excellence. The environment is practical and delivery-focused, with a clear need for a leader who can bring structure without compromising the positive team culture already in place. You’ll be expected to lead by example, support people’s growth, and create a consistent, high-performing engineering environment.
Please Note: If you have not been contacted within 10 working days, consider your application unsuccessful.
