Senior Engineering Manager in London

Obesity has become a global epidemic; in the UK, we spend £9 billion a year alone on diseases like type 2 diabetes (that’s 10% of the NHS budget). What’s shocking is most of this is preventable – through sustained lifestyle and habit change.

Enter Second Nature.

We’re here to help people take control of their health. By bringing together the latest behavioural science, psychology, technology, and the talents of our incredible team, our mission is to eradicate the global epidemic of chronic lifestyle diseases once and for all.

Our habit-change programme – delivered digitally through mobile and web apps – helps people to transform their lifestyle, lose weight, and ultimately reduce their risk for serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

About us:

• We've positively changed the lives of over 250,000 people
• We're rated 'Excellent' by over 7k of our members on Trustpilot
• We're growing extremely quickly & are now a profitable business
• We’re one of the few consumer health brands that are commissioned by the NHS and leading health insurer, Vitality Health
• We're a leading B2C provider of GLP-1 medication-assisted weight loss programmes, and 1 of 5 NICE-approved providers to deliver these services within the NHS in the future
• Our team members stay with us for an average of 4.3 years

You can find out more about working with us here and here.

The role:

We're looking for an experienced, hands-on, engineering manager to lead the delivery of software, alongside the Product Manager, in one of our product pods. You will line manage the engineers within the pod and help them grow and improve as a team. You will ensure the pod delivers amazing, impactful and clean software.

You are able, and happy, to sometimes still be hands on, but your focus should be on unblocking problems that other engineers are unable to solve and ensuring delivery continues at speed. You will work with other senior engineers to identify and fix bigger, cross-cutting issues that, once fixed, have a multiplier effect for the entire engineering team.

You will report directly into the VP of Engineering, a member of our leadership team.

What you'll do

• Focus on delivery within the pod, ensuring that the team are able to move at speed whilst maintaining quality
• Collaborate closely with the pod's PM, and other stakeholders, to ensure challenges, complexity and uncertainty are broken down into achievable pieces of work so that we can achieve our goals
• Communicate complex subjects simply to allow trade offs between quality, speed and scope to be made easily
• Run and improve the delivery process with the team, ensuring roadmaps and objectives are kept up to date and communicated
• Manage the engineers within the pod to help them grow and develop both technically and professionally
• You'll still be hands on, at times more than others, although the aim is to be able to focus on unblocking the team rather than being an individual contributor
• Work with other senior team members to bring in improvements across pods - you'll bring proactivity to identifying what those issues are, why they should be fixed, and what the priority for fixing them should be
• Leave your mark on our engineering culture with your technical leadership, ingraining your skills and knowledge.
• Set high standards in terms of speed and quality.
• Drive hiring of an exceptional team

Requirements

This is a long list so we don't expect you to hit every single point!

• You have 6+ years of software engineering experience
• You have 2+ years of team management experience
• You have worked predominantly within the JavaScript ecosystem (see below)
• You have experience working in a cross-functional team
• You have experience improving teams' processes alongside Product Managers
• Your management style enables other engineers
• You are motivated by seeing people and teams learn and grow
• You can solve complex problems quickly, are thorough and take pride in your work
• You appreciate software design as a craft but make pragmatic decisions when needed
• You want to build a product that changes people’s lives
• You have experience building/running/supporting hiring processes
• You adapt and enjoy the ride in a fast-changing start up environment

We’d love it if you tick some of these technical boxes:

• You have experience using Node.js
• You have experience with React/Next.js and Typescript
• You have experience working with React Native
• You have experience working in a NoSQL world/with MongoDB
• You have experience building infrastructure on AWS
• You have experience monitoring production infrastructure and applications
• You have experience improving the testing approach of a team
• You have implemented lean management practices in your previous teams

For your interest, this is our all-JavaScript tech stack:

• React Native for iOS and Android apps
• Node.js + Express API servers
• MongoDB our main database
• Next.js for our web frontend
• TypeScript for static typing
• Terraform for our IAC
• We are an AWS-first company

Benefits

• A competitive market salary, generous share options, and bi-annual performance reviews to recognise your contributions
• Hybrid working policy: 2 days/week in our West London office, the rest of the week remote working
• 25 days of holiday plus national holidays
• Quarterly company meet ups and socials
• Joining a culture of intelligent, friendly, and highly-motivated individuals who're passionate about what they do
• A budget of £200/year to spend on professional development
• Option to join the Salary Sacrifice scheme, and Cycle to Work scheme
• You’ll get to work with amazing, friendly, smart colleagues all incredibly passionate about solving the type 2 diabetes epidemic
• You can see the impact your work is having on improving thousands of people’s lives and tackling the obesity epidemic on a daily basis
• You’ll have autonomy and responsibility for your work direction