VP, Engineering

The VP, Engineering will report to the Chief Product & Technology Officer and will lead a team of 175 engineers. You’ll be a key member of our Business Leadership Group.

As VP Engineering, you will be responsible for driving technical excellence, fostering innovation, and building world-class products that delight our customers, partners, and internal users. This is a pivotal leadership role that combines strategic vision with technical leadership in a complex, fast-paced environment.

• Build and maintain a high-performance culture that attracts, retains, and develops top engineering talent. Drive performance management, goal setting, and regular feedback processes
• Lead, mentor, and develop a diverse engineering organisation of c.175 people including software engineers, engineering managers, and heads of engineering.
• Drive standardisation efforts where beneficial while maintaining flexibility for innovation
• Implement tooling, processes, and automation that accelerate development cycles and improve code quality
• Establish and embed engineering standards, best practices, and coding guidelines across all teams
• Partner closely with Product, Data, and Design leadership, as well as the wider business leadership, to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Foster collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence throughout the organisation
• Guide the strategic use of technologies including Kafka, event sourcing patterns, and emerging technologies
• Balance technical debt with feature delivery and long-term architectural goals
• Own and drive developer productivity, ensuring engineering teams are focused on delivering the right things, in the right way
• Oversee the evolution of our frontend and mobile applications built with TypeScript, React, and React Native
• Own and evolve the overall technical architecture and engineering strategy for UW
• Drive architectural decisions for our event-sourced backend systems built with Go
• Establish metrics and KPIs to measure and improve engineering productivity and system reliability
• Role model cross-functional working, inspiring the engineering teams to integrate and embrace working with colleagues across the UW organisation
• Ensure scalability, reliability, and performance of our distributed systems running on Kubernetes
• Participate in executive decision-making and strategic planning initiatives
• Establish clear career progression paths and ensure continuous learning and professional development across all levels
• Collaborate on product roadmap planning, ensuring technical feasibility and optimal resource allocation
• Work with Data teams to build scalable data pipelines and analytics capabilities
• Champion DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code

It's an incredibly exciting time at UW as our business continues to scale and this role is critical in bringing our North Star to life for our customers. We believe utilities shouldn't be complex and our proposition turns that perception on its head - but to deliver it at scale, we need a commercially-minded Technology leader, to lead a large engineering organisation.to provide a clear technical vision and strategy for Engineering at UW. You’ll be a seasoned people leader and a proven track record of operating in complex, multi-product, scaling environments.

Please note, if you are successful and offered a role at UW, you will be subject to a background check. Where checks are unsatisfactory or incomplete and/or a failure to reveal information relating to convictions that you are required to identify as part of the background checks, could lead to withdrawal of an offer of employment.

• You are a technology evangelist with a deep understanding of modern architectural patterns, cloud-native technologies, and how to leverage tech for business enablement. Our stack includes Go, React, ReactNative, Kubernetes, Kafka.
• Commercial Acumen: You understand the financial and business drivers that impact the organisation’s and function’s success.
• Previous experience in the utilities and/or regulated industries is valued but not essential.
• You can demonstrate the ability to develop and drive the delivery of a complex technical roadmap in a fast-paced environment.
• Strategic Thinking: You provide long-term vision while remaining flexible enough to adjust course based on evolving circumstances.
• You're a seasoned people-leader, having directly led large (100+) Engineering teams in a scaling, multi-faceted business. You’ll be comfortable managing managers and building effective organisational structures.
• Relationship Management: You engage effectively with internal and external stakeholders to align expectations and support outcomes.

We provide equal opportunities, a diverse and inclusive work environment, and fairness for everyone. You are welcome to apply no matter your age, disability, gender, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation. Please don’t be afraid to ask about what we can do to support your needs. All requests will be carefully and fairly considered.

Hi! We're UW. We’re on a mission to take the headache out of utilities by providing them all in one place. One bill for energy, broadband, mobile and insurance and a whole lot of savings!

• Electric Car salary sacrifice scheme through Tusker
• An industry benchmarked salary. We’ll share it during your first conversation.
• Hybrid working, with 2 days in the office. (We’re definitely open to discussing flexible working arrangements)
• Discounted private health insurance, access to an Employee Assistance line and a free Virtual GP. Our wellbeing app Unmind supports your mental health.
• Share Options LTIP
• Annual bonus linked to business and personal performance
• A matched contribution pension scheme and life assurance up to 4x your salary. You can also access free mortgage advice and a financial wellbeing tool.
• Family-friendly policies, designed to help you and your family thrive.
• Discount on our services and you get our coveted Cashback Card for free. You’ll also get access to 100s of rewards and discounts through Perkbox