[Hiring] Engineering Manager @Cambridge Spark

Role Description

This is a significant new role. We are building a product engineering capability that did not previously exist at Cambridge Spark: engineers who own business outcomes rather than feature backlogs, organised into small autonomous pods that own a slice of the learner or applicant experience end to end. We need an Engineering Manager to lead that.

In the first six months of this role, you will help us hire a new pod to own Employer Experience. You will then lead this pod directly, including its people, technical, and delivery outcomes.

The second pod – internal tooling and efficiency – will be hired as the company grows. It will be run day to day by a Tech Lead who owns its technical and delivery outcomes; you will remain line manager for its engineers, own their growth and wellbeing, and will be the escalation route for anything cross-pod.

As the role grows, this split means holding a clean line between what is yours and what belongs to your Tech Lead: staying out of their technical decisions while remaining accountable for the outcome, and coaching them toward their own next level rather than doing their job for them. If you have done this well before, we want to talk to you.

Key Responsibilities

• Pods staffed to plan: define roles with the Head of Engineering, interview, own onboarding and ramp-up, and improve hiring processes.
• Growth and retention: ensure every engineer has a clear development plan, receives honest feedback, and is visibly improving.
• A coherent two-pod operating model: maintain a clear division of ownership between you and your Tech Lead.
• Reliable delivery across both pods: ensure work flows without ambiguity and stakeholders can trust commitments.
• Work that is ready before it starts: partner closely with the Product Manager to ensure proper framing of work.
• Sound technical foundations: maintain architecture, code quality, and deliberate technical decision-making.
• Credible technical presence: lead design discussions and review code effectively without becoming a dependency.
• Incidents handled as a discipline: build and own incident management across both pods.
• Agreed practices that stick: ensure SDLC and AI-assisted development norms are adhered to.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing software engineers, including 1:1s, growth planning, and performance management.
• Hands-on experience in a modern web stack to lead design discussions and review code effectively.
• Track record of leading delivery in an agile environment.
• Active engagement with AI-assisted development tools.
• Experience hiring and onboarding engineers.

Requirements

• Strong written communication skills for proposals, decision records, and stakeholder updates.
• Comfortable representing engineering realities to Product and senior leadership.
• Able to work directly with non-technical colleagues to understand problems at their root.
• Ability to hold boundaries with technical counterparts without policing or blurring lines.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information.
• Focus on outcome ownership over activity.
• Collaborative without ego, prioritizing outcomes over credit.
• Communicative by default, surfacing problems early.

Desirable

• Experience operating in a pod- or squad-based organisational model.
• Experience building in a bootstrapped or resource-constrained business.
• Genuine interest in education, apprenticeships, and online learning.

What This Role Is Not

• It is not a role where you inherit an existing pod.
• It is not a hands-off management role.
• It is not a hands-on engineering role.
• It is not a delivery management or project management role.
• It is not a role with mature processes to inherit.
• It is not a big-company environment.

Why This Role

• Real scope from day one with a newly established pod to lead.
• Direct access to and influence with senior leadership.
• Work that matters, supporting thousands of learners.
• An AI-serious engineering culture with time to experiment.
• A stable, values-driven business with a social impact mission.

Benefits

• Pension with 4% matched contributions, opportunity to opt into salary sacrifice scheme.
• 25 days holiday + Flexi bank holidays + 1 day off on your birthday.
• A day for volunteering.
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave.
• Health & Wellbeing allowance of up to £30 per month.
• Annual Summer and Xmas events.
• Company socials including various events.
• CPD Allowance alongside quarterly reflections.
• Private medical insurance and cash plan.
• Holiday buy back scheme (up to 10 days p/a).
• Employee Assistance Programme with a dedicated company counsellor.