Senior Director Of Engineering

Job Description

**This role can be worked remotely from the UK/EU**

Rail is set to dominate short and medium haul travel around the world. It’s faster, cheaper, greener and more convenient than air travel, and it cuts down on the carbon emitting congestion of road travel. With the current climate crisis it’s more important than ever to put this mode of transport at the forefront of people's minds. For every travel company having rail as a booking option is like having vegan choices on the menu – it’s a must! The trouble is, there’s been nothing modern about rail’s online customer experience… until now.

We are SilverRail, a global tech company working to solve this problem by delivering the digital infrastructure that opens up rail to the world! Our technology is powering rail and travel agencies across Europe, USA and Australia/NZ in both leisure and corporate markets, making it easy for people to choose rail and cut their carbon emissions.

Although we have been around for more than 10 years, and with our teams based globally in London, Boston, Brisbane and Stockholm, we still consider ourselves an agile start-up business. We are using the Scrum framework for all our software development, and we believe in ‘fail-fast-fail-early’ to find innovative solutions to complex problems. Our agility and refreshingly novel approaches mean we have already developed into a force to be reckoned with in the European market, but we have ambitions for so much more! With a raft of new clients joining us, and with our growth about to enter its prime, we aim to become the biggest player in the rail tech space.

The role

We are seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to join our team, playing a pivotal role in our growing global Engineering team here at SilverRail.

The Engineering team is responsible for ensuring the delivery of our product - on time, on budget, of the highest quality and efficiency - to the marketplace. The team works closely with the product management team, providing the technical architecture and engineering execution strategy to the product team's functional and non-functional requirements.

The Senior Director of Engineering is responsible for directly managing the development and quality assurance teams focused on our User Facing Apps to ensure predictable delivery. An important part of this is working with the product management team to define scope and deliverables to achieve the overall product plan and goals of the company. Additionally, this role will work with the relevant teams to optimize the operational deployment and support of the production systems to maximize velocity of code to production while protecting stability of the application.

Responsibilities

• Work with Product Management, Design and Technology Development to define the product roadmap and go to market plan; responsible for the delivery and execution of all user-facing products
• As an integral partner to the consumer product leadership team, you'll share responsibility for leading the strategic planning for SilverRail’s user facing apps
• Help refine and continuously improve methodologies for documentation, process, quality assurance across the software development lifecycle
• Help define QoS and SLA metrics for application performance, as well as building and managing a team to test and certify that all metrics are achieved or exceeded
• Build, grow and manage a team of professionals to ensure exceptional execution

About you?

Qualifications

• At least 5 years’ experience as a senior manager in user facing, consumer software development, with focus on Web and Mobile applications
• Responsible for the technical strategy and direction of the user facing products
• Ability to collaborate cross-functionally to develop and communicate the product vision and strategy
• Passion for intuitive, frictionless user experiences
• Experience building secure, reusable, responsive and interactive user interfaces
• Experience with modern Front-End architecture patterns (Backend for Frontend, Micro Frontends, shared component libraries)
• Experience with React JS and related JavaScript frameworks
• Experience with building RESTful Web services
• Experience with build, test and deploy automation (Continuous Integration and Delivery – CI/CD)
• Experience working with product management teams to define customer requirements
• Ability to, in conjunction with stakeholders, build realistic business plans and budgets
• Ability to collaborate with partner engineering teams on a highly technical product
• Demonstrated strong leadership and decision-making skills
• Demonstrated ability to manage a team across geographically distributed locations, with a mix of hybrid and fully remote teams

Knowledge & Skills

• Excellent interpersonal, analytic and problem-solving skills
• Self-motivated, able to work independently and perform multiple tasks under minimal supervision
• Confidence to participate and contribute within a fast-paced, technically challenging, highly skilled and collegial development team
• Experience with building e-commerce applications a plus
• Knowledge of the travel industry a plus

Why us?

• We have an average Glassdoor grade of 4.7 and 100% recommendation rates.
• We are an accredited flexible company and were named in Flexa’s Top 50 Most Flexible Companies
• We utilise a hybrid working model, providing equipment for home working alongside occasional visits to our beautiful central London office.
• We offer a highly competitive benefits package including private healthcare and Perkbox rewards, as well as stock options that give you the chance to buy into SilverRail’s future.
• We provide a wealth of career development opportunities with training that is individual, focused on improving your skills and helping you become the best professional you can be.
• Our team’s health and wellness is genuinely important to us, so we offer a number of wellbeing seminars, yoga classes, and membership to the #1 leading meditation app.
• A unique opportunity to work for a tech start-up that is revolutionising the way we travel.

Our values are simple: Do Good by working for a better tomorrow; Think Big Act Smart by being curious, adaptable and data-driven; and remember that through collaboration we will always be Stronger Together.

*We are a neurodiverse employer and are working hard to improve our recruitment processes, so if there is any way that we can make the recruitment experience better for you then please email us directly: hr@silverrailtech.com - all information will be treated as strictly confidential*