Head of Software Engineering

Location: Hybrid - Bedfordview

Employment Type: Permanent

Industry: Insurance | Software Engineering | Technology Leadership

WatersEdge Solutions is partnering with a client to recruit a hands-on Head of Software Engineering to lead and mature the full software development lifecycle across internal business systems and customer-facing applications. This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who can balance people leadership with active engineering involvement in a .NET / C# environment.

About the Role

As Head of Software Engineering, you will own the SDLC from planning through development, QA, release, and application support. You’ll lead a team of approximately 12, including developers, test engineers, a scrum master, and an implementation specialist, while remaining hands-on with code reviews, standards, automation, DevOps practices, and technical direction.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the full SDLC across planning, development, QA, release, and support
• Establish repeatable, well-documented engineering processes
• Provide clear reporting on delivery, quality, and support metrics
• Drive Agile/Scrum delivery with effective, outcome-focused ceremonies
• Design and improve CI/CD pipelines for build, integration, and deployment
• Mature release management with rollback capability and change control
• Introduce infrastructure-as-code, environment standardisation, and configuration management
• Champion DevOps culture, automation, and shared ownership
• Define and implement test strategy across unit, integration, regression, and automated testing
• Own production reliability, incident response, root-cause analysis, monitoring, and alerting
• Manage, mentor, and grow the engineering team while protecting a healthy team culture
• Align delivery priorities with business stakeholders across internal and customer-facing systems

What You’ll Bring

• 9+ years in software development with progression into technical leadership
• Deep current expertise in the .NET / C# ecosystem
• Proven experience building mature SDLC processes from an immature baseline
• Strong DevOps background, including CI/CD, release automation, and configuration management
• Experience defining and implementing test strategy, unit testing, and test automation
• Experience owning production application support, incident management, and reliability practices
• Strong people leadership experience, including building, managing, developing, and retaining engineering teams
• Comfortable remaining hands-on through code reviews, automation prototyping, and technical leadership

Nice to Have

• Cloud experience, especially leading or planning cloud migrations
• Experience modernising legacy systems
• Containerisation experience
• Exposure to internal line-of-business systems and external customer-facing products
• Azure, Azure DevOps, or Kubernetes certifications
• Familiarity with observability tooling and SRE-style reliability practices

What’s On Offer

• Senior leadership opportunity with full SDLC ownership
• Hybrid working model based in Bedfordview
• Opportunity to shape engineering standards, automation, and DevOps culture
• Scope to lead both legacy modernisation and modern product delivery
• Chance to mentor and grow a strong technical team

Company Culture

This is a business that values strong team culture, accountability, and technical excellence. The environment is practical and delivery-focused, with a clear need for a leader who can bring structure without compromising the positive team culture already in place. You’ll be expected to lead by example, support people’s growth, and create a consistent, high-performing engineering environment.

Please Note: If you have not been contacted within 10 working days, consider your application unsuccessful.