Software Engineering Manager

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About the role

The Software Engineering Manager coordinates the execution of the engineering strategy and roadmap that supports BT's commercial strategy through cross functional business partnering and the participation of a team that pursues innovation as well as engineering excellence.

What you’ll be doing

1. AI Driven Product Development (PDLC)

• Own and lead AI driven product development across the full Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC), ensuring consistent adoption of AI first engineering practices across design, solutioning, development, and testing.
• Provide technical leadership and oversight to ensure teams deliver high quality, production ready solutions that meet defined quality, performance, and test coverage standards.
• Oversee impact analysis and architectural alignment, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, cost efficient, and aligned with platform, architectural, and enterprise standards.
• Be accountable for end to end engineering outcomes, turning problem statements from Product Owners and Operations into measurable improvements in colleague experience and business value.

2. AI Enabled ServiceNow Engineering

• Lead the integration and strategic use of AI capabilities within the ServiceNow platform, enabling AI assisted design, development, build, and deployment at scale.
• Oversee delivery of enhancements and new capabilities that improve ServiceNow functionality, usability, automation, and operational efficiency across BT Group.
• Drive innovation and technology adoption, shaping AI led solutions that support IT transformation and continuously improve the colleague experience.

3. Production Stability, Release Confidence & Continuous Improvement

• Ensure service stability and release quality, overseeing root cause analysis, remediation, and prioritisation of production issues and systemic improvements.
• Establish and monitor engineering and release quality metrics, driving predictable, on time delivery aligned to operational and business priorities.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance product quality, reduce technical debt, improve delivery speed, and optimise operational efficiency across the service lifecycle.

4. AI Assisted Engineering, Automation & Developer Productivity

• Champion the use of AI and automation to improve engineering productivity across development, testing, deployment, and documentation.
•Set expectations and standards for AI assisted ways of working, ensuring consistent, responsible, and effective use of AI tools across teams.
•Evaluate and drive adoption of emerging tools, frameworks, and patterns, balancing innovation with measurable gains in quality, speed, and cost efficiency.

5. Governance, Security & Responsible AI

• Own engineering governance across development, test, and production, ensuring solutions meet security, compliance, reliability, and audit requirements.
• Define and enforce standards for secure and responsible AI usage, including data handling, prompt safety, auditability, and risk controls.
• Partner closely with Architecture, Security, Legal, and Compliance teams to embed guardrails that protect the enterprise while enabling rapid, safe delivery.

6. Engineering Leadership, Culture & Collaboration

• Manage, coach, and develop software engineering teams, creating a high performing, inclusive, and engaged engineering culture.
• Act as a technical and people leader, promoting collaboration, ownership, and accountability across squads.
• Remove delivery blockers and provide clear technical direction, enabling teams to deliver predictably and at scale.
• Serve as a trusted engineering partner to Product Owners, Platform, Operations, and stakeholders, shaping sustainable, enterprise grade AI and ServiceNow solutions.

Essential Skills / Experience

Engineering & AI Leadership

• Proven experience leading AI driven product development across the PDLC with accountability for outcomes, not just delivery (Skill Level: 3 – Advanced)
• Strong software engineering background with ability to navigate code, logs, and debug complex production issues, without being hands on day to day (3 – Advanced)
• Experience providing technical direction and architectural oversight across teams (3 – Advanced)
• Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) expertise, including quality, release, and operability considerations (3 – Advanced)

ServiceNow & Platform Engineering

• Leadership experience delivering on ServiceNow or comparable enterprise platforms, ensuring scalability, governance, and reliability (3 – Advanced)
• Strong understanding of AI enabled engineering patterns (LLMs, agents, RAG, APIs, event driven integration) (3 – Advanced)

Delivery, Operations & Continuous Improvement

• Experience managing engineering delivery, releases, and production stability in complex environments (3 – Advanced)
• Strong Continuous Improvement mindset, driving measurable quality, efficiency, and automation gains (3 – Advanced)
• Ability to own operational outcomes, lead incident response, and ensure learning is embedded (3 – Advanced)

DevOps, Environments & Governance

• Solid understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, and multi environment governance, sufficient to oversee and challenge delivery (3 – Advanced)
• Experience operating within technology governance, security, and compliance frameworks, balancing control with speed (2 – Intermediate)
• Strong understanding of Responsible AI, data handling, and risk management practices (3 – Advanced)

Leadership, Culture & Ways of Working

• Proven people leadership experience, including performance management, coaching, and team development (3 – Advanced)
• Strong capability in Inclusive Leadership and Culture Building, fostering collaboration, trust, and psychological safety (3 – Advanced)
• Demonstrated Growth Mindset, encouraging innovation, learning, and continuous improvement across teams (3 – Advanced)
• Ability to articulate the big picture, align teams to strategy, and influence senior stakeholders (3 – Advanced)

Desirable Skills / Experience

• Exposure to ServiceNow Now Assist, Copilot Studio, Kiro, or similar AI enabled development tooling (3 – Advanced)
• Agile Development leadership experience across multi squad or platform teams (3 – Advanced)
• Business Analysis capability, translating complex problem statements into executable engineering outcomes (3 – Advanced)
• Technology Strategy experience, shaping roadmaps aligned to long term platform and business goals (3 – Advanced)
• Experience in Change Management, embedding new ways of working and technology adoption at scale (3 – Advanced)
• Advanced Project & Programme Management exposure, coordinating delivery across teams and dependencies (2 – Intermediate)
• Technology Governance experience at enterprise scale (2 – Intermediate)
• Talent Management experience, including succession planning and capability building (2 – Intermediate)

BT Group is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers.

BT Group’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.

Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.

We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country. Joining BT Group means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.