Senior Software Engineering Manager (Active Savings)
HL are looking for an experienced and talented Senior Software Engineering Manager to lead an Active Savings product development team in building market-leading solutions for our clients. The Savings application allows HL clients to easily deposit cash into a selection of savings accounts offered by partner banks. It is a bespoke development project with several functional sub-components. This is an opportunity to join the UK's number one investment services company, managing over £149.7 billion in assets for more than 1.86 million UK investors. As a secure, and highly respected brand, HL offers you the chance to make a genuine impact within one of the UK's most innovative and digitally focused businesses.
- Lead and inspire a cross-functional engineering team (c.25-30 people across 5 squads) to deliver high-quality software for the Active Savings tribe.
- Provide structured leadership that ensures consistent delivery, productivity, engagement, and team wellbeing.
- Foster a culture of technical excellence, purpose, and innovation aligned with HL's values and our regulated environment.
- Support the Head of Software Engineering to prepare for a next-generation replatforming of our core trading and customer systems.
- Recruit, develop, and retain top engineering talent, nurturing a high-performance culture with psychological safety at its core.
- Ensure best practices in agile delivery, DevOps, secure engineering, and operational support are upheld across the teams.
- Take ownership of your team's services - ensuring they are secure, reliable, scalable, and continually improved.
- Work closely with Product Managers and stakeholders to align engineering outcomes with business and client value.
- Translate complex technical concepts into business-friendly language and influence decision-making at senior levels.
- Champion continuous learning, cross-functional collaboration, and inclusive team growth.
- Significant experience in senior technology leadership roles within large-scale, regulated environments - ideally in Retail Banking and/or Asset and Wealth Management; covering Deposits, Card/SWIFT Payments, Pay By Bank, Faster Payment Service (FPS).
- Track record of managing and scaling high-performing software engineering teams (25+), balancing delivery and innovation.
- Strong engineering background with the ability to communicate architectural decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- You create guardrails based on scope, technical design, NFRs, and quality-then empower your team to innovate within them.
- Client- and product-focused mindset, with experience partnering closely with Product Managers and business teams.
- You embrace ambiguity, foster collaboration, and promote psychological safety to help teams navigate change.
- Hands-on knowledge of secure API design, authentication services, and mobile development (Swift/Kotlin, React Native).
- Knowledge and experience of modern DevOps tools and practices.
- Exposure to Figma and Vercel is a great plus.
- Experience leading engineering efforts across legacy and modern technology stacks.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and align cross-functional teams.
- Strong technical degree from a reputable university is highly desirable.
Tech Stack
- Java / Springboot / Gradle / HTML / GraphQL / Oracle / MyBatis / Swift / Kotlin
- Cucumber / Selenium / RestAssured / Jenkins
- Linux / Windows / AWS / Terraform IaC / Kubernetes
This will be a 3-stage interview process comprising an initial informal call with the hiring manager, followed by two structured interviews.
37.5 hours per week, with flexibility based on business demands and 2/3 days a week in our Bristol office.
