Software Engineering Manager
We are looking for an experienced Software Development Manager to oversee our four software engineering and QA teams. This person will be play a leading role in our efforts to build the next generation of adserve’s leading ad-tech solutions encompassing algorithmic ad-placement and machine learning. We’re looking for an innovative thinker with strong ability and experience in leading high-performing technical teams to impressive results.

Our team are all remote workers in the UK, and the candidate will need to demonstrate considerable experience of running remote development teams. Furthermore, the candidate will come from a software engineering background, with experience of our core stack (C#, React, AWS) and will be hands-on, leading by example, in the development of our applications. And increasingly you will have experience of working alongside AI tools such as Claude to drive greater efficiencies across the team.

What do we mean by a 'software engineering manager', as this can mean different things depending upon lots of factors (team size, scope, focus,) ?  At adserve, our software engineering manager is;

  • Part Product Champion. You can't direct a team to build a product without deeply understanding it - what it does, why, how and to what business impact. 
  • Part Architect. Working with our platform team, you're going to be responsible for major architectural decisions in respect software strategy, efficiency, effectiveness and impact. You will decide which resources to put on which part of the build, and measure their effective delivery both in terms of throughput and code quality.
  • Part Master Craftsman. As a coach and mentor both to software engineers and team leaders, you will be responsible for imparting best practice in software engineering - be this in coding patterns, test strategy, documentation, use of AI and other key disciplines in software engineering.
  • Part Site Foreman.  Think of a building site. You're the site foreman, walking the site clipboard in hand and ensuring everything is being built as it needs to be. You'll understand what's being built, why, in what order, with what constraints. You will lead the estimations of development effort and own the yardstick to ensure we keep to these estimations. You will understand the dependencies across the site, what materials are being used and why.  You will identify bottlenecks, and work with the engineers to unclog these.  
 
That's what we mean by a Software Engineering Manager at adserve. If this sounds like you, then read on.
 
Duties and Responsibilities
  • Performance management of the engineering team against key objectives, deliverables, quality and timescales so as to develop a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Manage our 25-person software engineering & dev/ops team, to be responsible for the planning, design and development of the next generation ad-tech solutions.
  • Partner with product management and delivery teams to align and prioritize current and future new product development initiatives in support of our business objectives
  • Manage cross functional engineering resources including Product Discovery, Delivery, QA, and DevOps
  • Motivate, lead and develop a team of diverse individuals with a variety of experience levels and skill sets.
  • Participate in the development, and lead the execution of, the product roadmap.
  • Collaborate with other leaders within Product and Engineering to grow and evolve our engineering team, tools, agile processes
  • Foster a culture of best practices in all aspects of software engineering
  • Demonstrate an unwavering commitment to the highest quality in any deliverable.
  • Own the end-to-end delivery process
  • Track and report on team progress
 
Our Tech Stack
  • AWS through and through. We’re using as much AWS technology as possible within the core of our products both to reduce time to market, improve interoperability and drive cost efficiencies.
  • C# for back-end development
  • React.js for front-end development
  • Claude.ai for code-pairing,  unit test creation, refactoring, code efficiency and creative thinking
 
Skills / Attributes - Mandatory
  • 5 years + track record of building and managing successful software delivery teams, in a commercial SaaS web application development environment.
  • Considerable expertise in running planning sessions, refinements, retrospectives and standups.
  • Demonstrated ability to create application development strategies founded on agile principles and effectively execute initiatives to achieve to desired outcomes
  • Expert level knowledge and experience in enterprise systems integration and best practices in the context of SaaS application development
  • Strong experience working with enterprise architecture and interface design, proven success architecting complex software solutions
  • Excellent communication, analytical and problem-solving skills with a keen customer focus capable of presenting technical solutions to customer, investors and other stake-holders.
  • Experience working with AI code development systems, such as Claude AI and adopting next-generation code development methods and processes where appropriate.
  • B.Sc Computer Science from a top rated university.
  • Ninja-level Jira knowledge

Skills / Attributes - Nice to Have
  • Experience in working with the broadcast, media and ad-tech sectors very desirable
  • Experience in running teams focused on machine learning, expert systems or business process automation.