Core Engineering and Operations Manager

The Role

The team

The Core Engineering and Operations Manager is a driving force behind the evolution of the Enterprise Platform, ensuring the platform and processes advance inline with business requirements.

This senior role has accountability for the run function of the department, including:

• Incident
• Demand

• Service Request

As well as responsibility for:

• Continuous Improvement

The engineers work within an SRE environment but are governed through ITIL. It is for the Core Engineering and Operations Manager to bridge this gap, which will involve reporting and continuously improving processes.

Whilst this is a fully non-technical role, a familiarity with the technology stack will help the role holder to guide the engineering team, by determining priorities, etc. The core technology stack used by the team is as follows:

• AWS Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for Enterprise
• Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for Enterprise
• GCP Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Windows Server workloads
• Windows VDI
• SQL workloads
• Linux workloads
• Commvault
• Jira
• LogicMonitor
• Puppet
• PowerShell

The role-holder is responsible for the day to day management of vendors, attending MSRs, managing contract renewals.

The role-holder will also provide line management of the core engineering squad, who are a small team of very highly skilled site reliability engineers and the management of the non-technical operations team.

In addition, the role holder will manage the backlog of continuous improvement, and ensure that this work is scheduled, alongside incident, demand and service requests

Main responsibilities

• Provide line management to the Core Engineering Squad and management of the Operations team within Enterprise platforms; Ensure a kind, collaborative culture, with no blame. A team where every individual can be themselves and their unique skills are recognised and valued.
• Provide non-technical coaching and guidance to the team and support them in building their careers.
• Manage the in-hours and out-of-hours operational rotas
• Maintain the Core Engineering backlog
• Manage the Core Engineering sprints
• Day-to-day vendor management
• Manage vendor contract renewals (with support from Procurement, Legal and Enterprise Platforms Product Manager)
• Define continuous improvement backlog priorities
• Define and maintain Continuous Improvement epics
• Attend demand prioritisation forums and schedule new demand
• Receive and manage suggestions from the Principal Engineer
• Escalating non-standard demand to evaluative engineering
• Working with the Product Manager, Principal Engineer and Delivery Manager to define the product roadmap
• Managing demand satisfaction surveys
• Managing operational escalations from the business
• Audit and compliance management
• Approving the invocation of DR in an emergency situation
• Lifecycle management
• Working with the licence manager to ensure licenses are managed
• Defining and running Core Engineering meetings
• Bridging the gap between SRE and ITIL
• Continuous process improvement
• Prioritising Core Engineering urgent work
• Requesting Evaluative Engineering time from the Delivery Manager for non-standard requests
• Working with Product Manager to ensure operating costs and forecasts are up-to-date and within budget
• Keeps across and understands all operational, demand, continuous improvement and service request tasks and issues
• Organises engagements with other technology teams as required
• Leads demand discovery engagements
• Manages relationships with application teams across the business
• Organising Core Engineering/Operations events and meetings
• Distributing operations work to ensure balance during busy and quiet periods

Skills you’ll need (minimum criteria)

• Extensive experience in roles involving line management. Ideally as an Operations or SRE manager is essential
• Experience of managing multiple projects simultaneously, keeping to time and budget is essential
• Demonstrable stakeholder management skills are essential
• Experience of working in cloud-based teams is essential
• Extensive knowledge of both SRE and ITIL is essential
• An understanding of creative leadership is essential
• Experience of Scrum and Kanban-based agile delivery approaches, tools and measurement is essential
• Experience of working in a SRE team is highly desirable
• Experience of engaging with a range of stakeholders including senior management
• Experience of liaising between technical experts and non-technical or business stakeholders
• Experience of vendor management
• A non-technical understanding of relevant technologies
• Experience of contributing towards roadmap development
• An understanding of lifecycle, demand, audit and compliance and license management
• An understanding of continuous improvement
• An excellent understanding of FinOps

Other things we’re looking for (key criteria)

• Provides clear, empathetic, and creative leadership to both technical and non-technical teams. Experienced in line management and team empowerment to deliver high-quality service.
• Understands that great products stem from strong teams and customer feedback. Committed to continuous improvement through collaboration and user insights.
• Track record of delivering projects and products using agile and waterfall methodologies, working effectively across technical and business functions.
• Exceptional attention to detail and highly organised, capable of managing multiple complex issues and workstreams simultaneously.
• Passionate about emerging technologies, especially Cloud and Automation, with a sharp awareness of industry trends.
• Confident and clear in stakeholder engagement, presenting well-reasoned proposals and fostering alignment across teams.
• Thrives in fast-paced, dynamic environments. Flexible with working hours to meet critical deadlines.
• Balances technical excellence with business awareness. Inquisitive and proactive, always seeking ways to enhance customer and platform experiences.
• Open and transparent, with a strong culture of knowledge sharing and collective issue resolution.