Software Engineering Manager

Our client is a major defence and aerospace company.

Date Posted: 2026-08-06 Country: United Kingdom Location: Harlow, Essex Position Role Type: Onsite

Software Engineering Manager (ATMS) Harlow Permanent, full time Hybrid (min 3 days a week on site)

Benefits:

• £: Competitive salary
• Contributory Pension Scheme (up to 10.5% company contribution)
• 6 times salary ‘Life Assurance' with pension
• 25 days holiday (increasing with service) statutory public holidays, plus opportunity to buy and sell up to 5 days (37hr)
• Company bonus scheme (discretionary)
• Flexible Benefits scheme with extensive salary sacrifice schemes, including Health Cashplan, Dental, and Cycle to Work amongst others
• Enhanced sick pay
• Enhanced family friendly policies including enhanced maternity, paternity shared parental leave

Work Culture

• 37hr working week, although hours may vary depending on role, job requirement or site-specific arrangements.
• Early 1.30pm finish Friday, start your weekend early!
• Remote, hybrid and site based working opportunities, dependant on your needs and the requirements of the role.
• Up to 5 paid days volunteering each year.
• Flexible working culture focused on output, with more formal flexible working arrangements on request (assessed subject to role) - please highlight any requests to the Talent Acquisition team.

About us

We take immense pride in being a leader in defence and aerospace technology. As an employer, we are dedicated to fuelling innovation, nurturing talent, and fostering a culture of excellence. As a key member of the Engineering Leadership Team, the successful candidate will lead a multidisciplinary software engineering team, delivering innovative software solutions and technical expertise to military and civil customers worldwide. The role is accountable for engineering execution, software architecture governance, delivery performance, capability development, and the strategic direction of software technologies across the business. This position combines software delivery leadership, technical excellence, people development, and strategic capability growth within a complex, safety-critical operational environment. The successful candidate will have access to a range of professional development opportunities and will play an important role in the continued growth and success of our client's engineering capability. The role is based at our client's Harlow facility and reports directly to the Head of Engineering for the ATMS Business.

Responsibilities

• Managing the ATMS Software Engineering team across programmes, product developments and RD activities.
• Providing leadership, coaching, mentoring, and career development for software engineers.
• Leading preparation of technical proposals, software estimates, and technical responses to bids.
• Leading software architecture, design and development activities with internal and external partners.
• Driving Agile delivery, DevSecOps principles and CI/CD practices.
• Establishing software engineering standards, governance, and metrics.
• Leading software integration, verification, validation, and release activities.
• Collaborating with Systems Engineering, Test Integration, Product Management and Cyber Security teams.
• Managing software quality, maintainability, technical debt and technical risk.
• Supporting software assurance, certification and accreditation activities.
• Defining software capability aspects of the ATMS technology and product roadmaps.
• Supporting recruitment, succession planning and capability development.

Candidate Requirements

Essential

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Engineering or related discipline.
• Experience managing software engineering teams across the product development lifecycle.
• Experience leading engineering teams within programme environments and supporting technical proposal activities.
• Experience developing software engineering capability, processes, tools and best practices.
• Experience in line management of functional teams.
• Experience delivering complex software systems within regulated, safety-critical or mission-critical environments.
• Experience with software architecture, SDLC management and engineering governance.
• Experience with software methodologies (e.g. Agile, Waterfall) and modern DevSecOps practices.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Outstanding analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Eligible for UK MOD Security Clearance (SC minimum).

Desirable

• Experience within Air Traffic Management, Air Traffic Control, Aerospace, or Defence.
• Radar domain knowledge and/or experience.
• Experience in modelling and simulation.
• Practical experience of MBSE implementation.
• Knowledge of certification processes across the product lifecycle.
• Experience delivering distributed, real-time or mission-critical software systems.
• Knowledge of software assurance, safety engineering, and cyber security frameworks.
• Experience implementing CI/CD, automated testing and software quality practices.

LI-BZ1

Its parent company adheres to the principles of equal employment. All qualified applications will be given careful consideration without regard to ethnicity, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

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