Senior Engineering Manager

The Senior Engineering Manager (Senior Chapter Lead) is a senior leadership role responsible for the overall health, capability and effectiveness of engineering teams within their area of responsibility. The role combines engineering strategy, people leadership, capability development and delivery enablement, replacing the traditional Chapter‑led model with a more integrated approach.

Senior Engineering Managers lead and develop Engineering Managers and other engineering leaders, ensuring that teams are equipped with the right skills, standards, leadership capability and ways of working to deliver high‑quality outcomes sustainably.

The role defines and owns engineering strategy within scope, takes responsibility for its success, and works in close partnership with delivery, product, architecture and senior technical leaders to ensure engineering contributes effectively to business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Vision

• Define and own engineering strategy within scope, aligned to broader technology and capability direction.
• Set clear strategic priorities, standards and expectations that guide how engineering teams operate and evolve.
• Balance short‑term delivery needs with long‑term capability, sustainability and risk management.
• Take responsibility for the effectiveness and outcomes of engineering strategy, adapting direction based on data, feedback and performance.
• Contribute insight and learning to wider capability and technology discussions.

Leadership & Delivery

• Hold leaders accountable for effective people leadership, clear ownership and sustained performance.
• Partner with delivery and product leadership to ensure teams are appropriately supported, resourced and organised.
• Focus on system‑level health, identifying recurring organisational issues, resourcing challenges or ways of working that hinder teams.
• Use outcome‑focused metrics and insight to improve consistency, predictability and team effectiveness.

Cross-Functional Influence

• Operate as a senior engineering leadership partner across delivery, product, architecture and technology.
• Work alongside Principal Engineers, ensuring their technical decisions are supported by effective capability strategy, leadership and organisational structures.
• Influence cross‑functional decisions by bringing perspective on capability, leadership capacity, risk and sustainability.
• Represent engineering needs in planning, prioritisation and governance forums.
• Act as an escalation point for complex people, capability or organisational challenges that cannot be resolved at team level.

Innovation & Engineering Excellence

• Drive continuous improvement in engineering practices, controls and automation to improve quality, reliability and developer experience.
• Ensure engineering, design and testing practices comply with organisational governance and regulatory requirements.
• Support responsible adoption of innovation, including automation and GenAI, to enhance productivity while maintaining appropriate controls.
• Promote reuse of proven patterns, improved documentation and knowledge sharing across teams.

Culture & Talent

• Line manage and develop Engineering Managers and Staff Engineers.
• Build leadership capability across the reporting line, supporting the development of managers focused on both delivery and people leadership.
• Own succession planning and leadership development within scope.
• Lead recruitment, onboarding and talent development activities to ensure engineering teams have the capability and capacity required.
• Foster an inclusive, psychologically safe culture that encourages accountability, learning, transparency and continuous improvement.

Who You Are

• An engineering leader with significant experience leading leaders and building engineering capability.
• Comfortable defining and owning strategy within scope and taking responsibility for outcomes.
• Credible and confident working alongside senior technical specialists.
• Skilled at managing complexity, ambiguity and competing priorities.
• Data‑informed, using insight and evidence to drive improvement.
• A role model for engineering professionalism, collaboration and continuous improvement.

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

Disability Confident Leader

As a Disability Confident Leader, for candidates with a disability or long-term health condition, that opt into the Disability Confident scheme, we’ll invite a fair and proportionate number of applicants that meet the essential requirements of the role to the first stage of our selection process.

If you need any adjustments or support with your application or during the recruitment process, just let us know. Please do email us or contact us on 07386666328. This number is dedicated to supporting candidates that require reasonable adjustments or support during the application process.

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