Head of Software Development

Head of Software DevelopmentJob Ref:01007 Business Group:IT Career Area:IT Location:London Salary Range:Attractive Basic + Bonus + Full Benefits Type:Permanent Date Published:27 January 2012 Closing Date:27 February 2012 Apply The engineering function within the technology group has seen significant growth in the past couple of years in response to the gathering momentum behind the Financial Times digital publishing objectives. That trend will continue with even more drive and focus over the next few years. This growth and scale has resulted in a need to coherently direct and support many development teams whilst maintaining a culture of excellence. Agile product development is in various stages of adoption throughout the organisation and requires coaching and leadership by example in the use of best practices including evolving standards and guidelines for consistency. Our focus is to constantly deliver customer value but not at the long term expense of quality of implementation which would lead to unsustainable product development. We cannot emphasise the term 'quality' enough. It is a factor that should feature in everything we do, from setting the bar high when we recruit, to being tenacious in getting to the bottom of an issue affecting our customers. Individuals should be encouraged to take ownership and be proud of delivery quality products. Continuous improvement and reducing waste are other principles that we hold in high regard. We need to develop a strategy for the engineering team to improve the quality of service that it delivers as well as monitoring it's progress. We are fundamentally refactoring the operational technology organisation so we can truly align with the business objectives to ensure everything we are do is supporting them. This is an opportunity to make a huge difference at an exciting time in this companies development. Responsibilities Functional Management: ? Responsible for the Software Development function within Engineering; delivering healthy, well tested and consistently error free code. ? Line management duties of multiple Software Development Managers and senior functional team leads including appraisals, training, motivating and performance management. ? Staff resourcing to include defining, managing and improving the hiring process for permanent and contract software development positions. Resource planning and recruitment will be an immediate focus. ? Career progression including mentoring of staff. ? Building on an environment that people enjoy working in. ? Represent the engineering function within the Financial Times and externally by contributing to websites, forums and events. ? Keeping up to date with the latest technologies and practices and contributing to process and system improvements. Operational Management: ? Support and provide design, development and deployment direction for the software development teams in aid of business operations. ? Provide technical leadership assistance to development teams in partnership with the programme leadership. ? Support the management of the technology portfolio. ? Constantly seek to reduce waste and continuously improve our development processes and practices. ? Coach teams in agile development. ? Communicating the business goals and objectives. ? Assisting with critical support issues, essential to be analytical, inquisitive with an attention to detail. ? Fostering cross team collaboration through free sharing of knowledge, insight and ideas. Skills and Experience ? Minimum of 3 years experience running a sizeable development function (at least 5 or more teams) with successful technical leading experience. ? Minimum of 5 years of senior software engineering in web technologies with an advanced level of programming, but not being wedded to 1 programming platform. ? Solaris, Linux, Windows ? Java (favoured),