Software Engineering Manager

My client is looking for a Software Engineering Manager to join their team in Leatherhead. You don’t need to already hold a “Manager” title — Senior, Lead, or Principal Engineers with strong Java skills and proven mentoring/leadership experience are encouraged to apply.

Important: This role requires 4 days per week on-site. Please only apply if you’re comfortable with that commitment.

• Hands-on coding and documentation (~70–80% of your time) in Java.
• Leading and supporting a small team (3 Developers + 1 SRE), providing mentorship, guidance, and coaching.
• Driving technical delivery while maintaining high engineering standards.

• Experience: 5+ years in software engineering (Java focus), with at least 2 years in a leadership, mentoring, or management role.
• Java expertise: Strong background in Java and frameworks like Spring Boot, Hibernate, RESTful services.
• System design: Experience designing and scaling distributed Java systems.
• Delivery focus: Skilled in Agile practices, backlog refinement, and release planning.
• Incident management: Confident leading production incident response, JVM debugging, and RCA documentation.
• Cloud & DevOps: Exposure to AWS, GCP, or Azure, plus CI/CD pipelines, Docker/Kubernetes, and IaC tools.
• Ops mindset: Proficiency with monitoring/observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk).
• Security awareness: Knowledge of secure coding practices and OWASP considerations in Java applications.
• Financial acumen: Able to manage budgets and optimise spend on tools/services.
• Client-facing ability: Comfortable explaining technical issues in plain language to non-technical stakeholders.
• Leadership: Track record of mentoring, coaching, and growing engineering talent.