Senior Engineering Manager

Every minute of every day, Smiths Detection’s threat detection and security screening technology helps to protect people and infrastructure, making the world a safer place.

Smiths Detection, part of Smiths Group is a global leader in the development, manufacture and management of security and detection solutions designed to make the world a safer place. Our technology provides threat detection and screening solutions for customers in our key markets: aviation, ports and borders, defence, and urban security.

Our expertise spans 21 global offices, seven manufacturing sites and five R&D centres, with a global network of 3,000 dedicated colleagues contributing towards over 40 years at the frontline of advances in safety and security.

This results in careers built on variety and the opportunity to work on a range of state-of-the-art solutions, where you can develop your knowledge and experience every day.

Duties:

Leadership, Mentorship & Cultural Awareness

• Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of software developers, fostering professional growth and technical mastery.
• Conduct regular one-on-one sessions, performance reviews, and provide constructive feedback.
• Demonstrate strong communication, empathy, and active listening skills to build trust and cohesion within the team.
• Cultivate an inclusive environment that values diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and working styles.
• Promote psychological safety, encouraging open dialogue, respectful debate, and constructive feedback.
• Adapt leadership approaches to different cultural contexts, ensuring collaboration across global or cross-functional teams, with the ability to support the bridge between the markets (sales) teams and the industry (vertical) teams.

Onboarding & Knowledge Transfer

• Drive effective onboarding processes for new team members, ensuring they quickly gain the technical and domain knowledge needed to contribute successfully.
• Establish and maintain clear documentation, coding standards, and best practices to support long-term team efficiency.
• Promote structured knowledge-sharing sessions, pair programming, and cross-training to reduce single points of failure and build resilience within the team.
• Foster a culture where expertise is openly shared, enabling smooth transitions when responsibilities shift and ensuring continuity across projects.
• Leads and develops employees through strong influential skills & using a performance management and development process that provides an overall context and framework to engage employee contribution with goal setting, feedback, and performance development planning.
• Collaborate with Human Resources to build and develop capabilities, reduce ‘single points of excellence’, depth, and diverse team to deliver against the product and technical roadmaps.
• Collaborate closely with other Digital Senior Engineering Managers within the Portfolio, but across the other Portfolios to foster knowledge sharing, harmonize ways of working, leverage engineering capabilities effectively, and strengthen organizational resilience and increasing cross-functional collaboration.
• Leverage resource capacity including assignments, training, leave management, telecommuting and administers continuous performance review program to ensure effectiveness, compliance, and equity within the organization.

Technical Ownership & Project Delivery

• Provide technical leadership for the design, development, validation, and deployment of AI and computer vision solutions, ensuring alignment with product strategy, system architecture, and business objectives.
• Apply a strong technical background in computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning to guide architectural decisions, evaluate technical approaches, and support the team in solving complex engineering challenges.
• Ensure high software engineering standards through sound architectural principles, coding guidelines, code reviews, automated testing, documentation, and maintainable software design.
• Maintain sufficient hands-on technical expertise to effectively lead teams developing in Python and C/C++ within Linux environments, including Bash scripting, Git-based development workflows, and Jenkins-based CI/CD pipelines.
• Own project planning and delivery in close collaboration with Program Managers, Product Managers, Product Owners, Architects, and other stakeholders. Define priorities, allocate work, manage dependencies and risks, remove blockers, and ensure reliable delivery against agreed commitments.
• Collaborate with Quality, Service, Systems Engineering, and product line teams to ensure product quality, operational readiness, lifecycle support, and the successful transfer of new digital technologies into the new product introduction process.
• Build and promote technical competencies across the organization while continuously improving development processes, engineering tools, CI/CD practices, and product lifecycle processes.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Stay updated with emerging technologies and industry trends.
• Drive process adherence, improvements, automation, and efficiency within the team.
• Champion a culture of innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning.

Troubleshooting & Problem Solving

• Act as the escalation point for complex technical issues, guiding the team in diagnosing and resolving problems efficiently.
• Apply and teach structured problem-solving techniques to identify root causes and implement sustainable solutions.
• Encourage a proactive mindset within the team, ensuring potential issues are anticipated and mitigated before they impact delivery.
• Balance short-term fixes with long-term improvements to maintain system stability and scalability.
• Think solutions rather than problems.

Technical Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

Education / Training

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
• Proven experience (5+ years) in software development, with at least 2 years in a leadership role.
• Proven matrix and stakeholder management skills/experience working virtually in diverse teams.
• Solid understanding of software architecture, design patterns, and agile methodologies.
• Ability to balance technical depth with strategic leadership.
• Effective communication skills at all levels of the organization and collaborative abilities.
• Excellent communication skills particularly in English (fluently spoken and written), in addition to any local language spoken at the place of work.
• Significant progressive experience in product development and engineering. Prior experience with system integration and/or as an architect in multiple software/system projects.
• Knowledgeable in program management; hardware, software & product design development activities including advanced process & development technology.
• Understanding of technical challenges within key markets digital preferred.
• Effective communicator and leader, makes commitments and delivers on promises.
• Ability to read, analyze, and interpret general business periodicals, professional journals, technical procedures.
• Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals.
• Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public.
• A self-starter with the ability to manage your time effectively, keen attention to detail and use your own initiative

Competencies and Abilities:

Execution focus and results-driven: The ability and motivation to persistently pursue and achieve effective results which drive the business forward.

The understanding and recognition of the organisation’s commercial environment and positioning themselves, their role and their actions in order to support the organisation’s commercial success. The key measure of success will be the attainment of milestones and KPIs, on time and within budget, for each initiative overseen. This can be demonstrated by:

• Setting and communicating KPIs and targets.
• Adopting a routine planning and reporting to monitor implementation progress across various KPI targets.
• Executing in a disciplined and focused manner, keeping in mind the big picture.
• Prioritizing effectively to focus time and effort on issues of the highest importance and urgency.
• Identifying root causes of issues, developing pragmatic approaches to resolve these and deploying the appropriate resources to act on these.

Join us and we’ll help build your career, with excellent training and opportunities for career growth across the business, both locally and globally. You’ll experience an inclusive environment, with strong leadership and a focus on safety and wellbeing. You’ll also have the flexibility to choose from a wide range of benefits to suit your lifestyle, offering you and your family support from a health and wellbeing, financial and lifestyle perspective.

Join us and work for a world-leader, with the benefits and training to reward your dedication and skills. Be part of a team where we are making the world a safer place.

We believe that different perspectives and backgrounds are what make a company flourish. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment regardless of color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, economic status, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristics. We are proud to be an inclusive company with values grounded in equality and ethics, where we celebrate, support, and embrace diversity.

At no time during the hiring process will Smiths Detection, nor any of our recruitment partners ever request payment to enable participation - including, but not limited to, interviews or testing. Avoid fraudulent requests by applying jobs directly through our career’s website.