Software Engineering Manager

Job Description

Oak is a fully remote, mission-driven organisation offering high levels of flexibility, autonomy, and purpose. We’re a national not-for-profit organisation working in partnership with teachers to create high-quality, sequenced curriculum and lesson resources for pupils across all subjects and age groups.

Our culture has been independently recognised through:

• Flexa verified (93% overall score, including 95% for working hours and 97% for role modelling)

• Escape the City's Top 1% Employers – based on anonymous colleague reviews of culture, development, and impact

• Investors in People Gold - through external accreditation and colleague feedback

💡 About the Role

Oak provides school teachers and pupils with the highest-quality curriculum and lesson resources across all subjects and age groups.

In this role, you will join our engineering leadership team to manage engineers across our product squads and platform teams, supporting them to thrive and grow. You will work closely with product and platform colleagues to enable effective delivery and continuous improvement, and you will contribute to hiring a diverse mix of permanent colleagues and freelancers to ensure we have the capability needed to deliver our ambitious goals.

Our engineers work in cross-functional product squads alongside designers, researchers, and education experts, regularly releasing new features and improvements that provide teachers and pupils with quick and easy access to high-quality learning resources.

🔧 What You’ll Be Doing

• Develop and manage a high-performing team 

• Lead the continuous improvement of software engineering practices and processes

• Working with product managers, manage the engineering backlog ensuring that important tasks are prioritised alongside bugs and product features

• Prioritise the hiring and retention of a diverse, engaged and collaborative team of engineers

• As a member of the Oak Team, contribute to the planning and culture of the organisation.

• Work in cross-functional and product-oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required.

• Deputise for the Head of Engineering and take on other general responsibilities as required.

🌱 What We’re Looking For

• 2+ years experience leading the continuous improvement of an engineering team’s processes and practices

• Experience of recruiting, developing and managing a high performing engineering team

• Substantial experience working in cross functional teams or squads

• Can demonstrate an understanding of how modern web applications work

• Extensive knowledge of the software product development lifecycle and how it influences the success of a product and a team

• You will be comfortable working at pace, with a range of digital systems (including proprietary ones as required) and you will continuously look at ways that the team can keep getting better. You will be excellent at working as part of a remote team, building relationships and managing your time effectively.

If this sounds like what you’d love to be doing, we can’t wait to hear from you. If you’re not sure that you exactly fit the above criteria, get in touch anyway. Ability and attitude are just as important as experience!

💛 Our Benefits

• 25 days annual leave, plus one extra day for each year of service (up to 28)

• Additional Oak closure days over Christmas/New Year

• 11% employer pension contribution (with no minimum employee contribution)

• A 36-hour working week, with half-days on Fridays or every other Friday off

• Fully remote working — we’ll support your home set-up and offer coworking options if preferred

• Twice-yearly in-person offsites to collaborate, connect, and have fun

• A culture that genuinely supports flexibility, autonomy, and trust

🌈 Inclusion and Belonging

We believe diverse teams build better products. We warmly welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those who are underrepresented in the tech and education sectors.

We use the Applied recruitment platform to help reduce bias in our hiring process.

📌 Key Info

• Location: Remote, but you must be based in the UK with the legal right to work here

• Sponsorship: Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time

• Closing date: We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in and may close the role early

If this sounds like the kind of role and team where you could do your life’s best work, we’d love to hear from you.

Next steps

You’ll answer some questions related to your day-to-day job. Your answers will go through our sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised, and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers (real humans).

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to the next stage, which will consist of a 1-hour Zoom interview to discuss your experience in the role.

We love giving feedback, so at the end of the application process, we'll share how well you performed.

We aim to begin interviews in late January/early February 2026.

We are receiving excellent responses to our job advertisements. This may lead us to close the role early, so if you are considering applying, then please get your application in early to avoid missing out.

We are an equal opportunities employer.

We are committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.