Engineering Manager

Location: Remote

Salary: £95,000 - £105,000

About us

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. 

We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Where data guides progress without overwhelming staff. And where everyone working in a school is reminded why they got into education every day. 

Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 7,000 schools and trusts. Giving time and power back to staff, turning data into clear, actionable insights, and supporting happier working days. 

At the heart of our brand is a recognition that the challenges schools face today aren’t just about efficiency, outputs and productivity - but about creating happier working lives for the people who drive education everyday: the staff. We want to make schools more joyful places to work, as well as learn. 

About the role

We are looking for an experienced and collaborative Engineering Manager (Ecosystem) to join our Engineering team and help us drive delivery performance, coach engineers, and ensure teams are healthy, engaged, and effective. The remit and focus of the role is to lead the delivery and development of engineers within the EcoSystem area, covering Arbor Workflows, API, and Group MIS. It’s a broad and exciting role, so we’re looking for someone up for a challenge - if you’re a good communicator and an effective leader, this is the role for you.

Core responsibilities

• Delivery Leadership
• Drive delivery performance across multiple teams, ensuring projects are delivered predictably and to a high standard.
• Lead planning, estimation, and delivery tracking, ensuring progress is visible and dependencies are managed.
• Partner with Product Managers to define priorities, shape roadmaps, and ensure alignment between product and engineering goals.
• Manage unplanned work and continuously improve flow, throughput, and quality using DORA and SPACE (DX Core 4) metrics.
• Support the implementation of agile practices that promote sustainable delivery and team autonomy.
• People Management & Development
• Lead, coach, and develop engineers and Technical Leads, fostering an inclusive and high-performing culture.
• Manage performance, support career progression, and identify opportunities for skill development.
• Promote accountability, collaboration, and ownership across teams.
• Ensure a healthy balance between delivery speed and long-term maintainability.
• Champion psychological safety and team wellbeing.
• Process & Engineering Maturity
• Continuously improve estimation accuracy, delivery predictability, and coordination between teams.
• Establish and monitor engineering metrics to identify improvement opportunities.
• Standardise delivery processes across teams while allowing flexibility for context-specific approaches.
• Ensure adherence to engineering quality standards, release processes, and best practices.
• Collaborate with the Staff Engineer and Technical Leads to align delivery practices with technical strategy.
• Cross-Team Coordination & Collaboration
• Manage dependencies between Ecosystem teams and other areas of the organisation.
• Work closely with the Portfolio team to report progress, raise blockers, and contribute to strategic roadmap planning.
• Partner with Engineering Leadership to remove systemic blockers and improve cross-functional collaboration.
• Collaborate with Product Directors to align product and technical roadmaps.
• Leadership & Culture
• Act as a key member of the STEM chapter, helping shape Arbor’s approach to delivery, people management, and organisational maturity.
• Represent the Ecosystem area within engineering leadership forums.
• Lead by example in promoting a culture of quality, data-driven improvement, and continuous learning.
• Foster collaboration across UK and Serbia teams through regular communication, shared objectives, and termly offsites.
• Accountability
• Accountable for team performance, delivery outcomes, and engineering health across the Ecosystem area.
• Responsible for measurable improvements in delivery predictability, lead time, and change failure rate.
• Expected to drive process improvement, increase velocity, and maintain a high-quality engineering environment.

About you

• Proven experience leading engineering teams (5+ engineers) across multiple disciplines including Software, QA, and DevOps.
• Experience using DORA and SPACE metrics to measure and improve delivery performance and developer experience.
• Strong background in agile delivery (Scrum or Kanban) with CI/CD and continuous delivery practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across engineering, product, and leadership functions.
• Experience mentoring engineers and Technical Leads, and managing performance and development.
• Ability to use metrics and qualitative insight to identify issues and deliver measurable improvement.
• Strong understanding of engineering principles, systems thinking, and modern delivery practices.
• Experience working in distributed teams across multiple locations.
• Have excellent communication skills and the ability to build trusted relationships across teams and locations.
• Be comfortable presenting to large groups and representing engineering leadership both internally and externally.

Bonus skills

• Background in software engineering, ideally with knowledge of PHP, Node, TypeScript, AWS, or Kong API Gateway.
• Experience leading delivery for SaaS or API-centric products.
• Familiarity with performance and reliability engineering principles.
• Proven ability to influence culture and engineering practices in growing organisations.
• Experience working in an environment balancing product growth with platform scalability.