As a Head of Engineering at Endava, you will provide cohesive engineering leadership across Endava's internally-focused business systems, supporting the wider Endava organisation (People, Growth, Finance) and enabling teams (e.g., Integrations & Data, Enterprise, AI & Automation). You will raise engineering capability and consistency by championing high standards, quality, reliability, and team health so that Product strategy can be delivered predictably.

Reporting Line

• Reports to: SVP of Product Management (Application Management and Development).
• Directly career-coaches discipline leads (e.g., Engineering, QA/Automation, DevOps/SRE) and supports Tech Leads / Engineering Leads through coaching and community leadership.
• People leadership model: this role is a career coach and discipline leader to start with, not the primary day-to-day line manager for delivery teams.

Core Responsibilities

Talent & Growth

• Coach and develop engineering leadership (e.g., Tech Leads / Engineering Leads, Solutions Architects, Senior Engineers) through clear career paths, mentoring, and skills development.
• Identify systemic capability gaps and run targeted uplift initiatives (coaching, training, hiring support).
• Support hiring outcomes by shaping role profiles, participating in interviews, and helping onboard talent.
• Partner with Delivery Managers to improve resourcing effectiveness, match capability to priorities, and reduce single points of failure.

Technical Excellence

• Define and evolve a lightweight Business Systems Engineering Handbook with standards and guardrails (coding conventions, code review, branching, CI/CD quality gates, security in SDLC).
• Drive a deliberate technical debt approach: create visibility, prioritisation, and sustained burn-down tied to measurable outcomes.
• Ensure consistent platform and integration engineering practices across domains.
• Promote practical adoption of AI across engineering workflows and Endava's internally-focused business systems where it improves quality, speed, and reliability.
• Partner with Product Management (Product Owners and Business Analysts) and Delivery Managers to surface technical risks, dependencies, and constraints early.

Quality & Reliability

• Own the quality strategy and levels of test automation appropriate to each domain or team.
• Drive SRE fundamentals: reliability targets, incident management, and post-incident learning.
• Improve consistency of release standards, testing coverage, and operability across teams.

Ways of Working

• Promote consistent DevOps and release practices across teams: incremental delivery, trunk-based flow where feasible, automated quality gates.
• Strengthen documentation culture and knowledge sharing through engineering runbooks, ADRs, and onboarding guides.
• Guide and monitor the Definitions of Ready and Done in partnership with Product Management.
• Align engineering practices with Endava frameworks (e.g., TEAM, TEAS, Dava.Flow) and drive pragmatic adoption so teams operate consistently and perform at a high level.

Governance & Collaboration

• Be the engineering counterpart to Product leadership, clarify decision rights, ensure technical risks/constraints are visible, and keep engineering execution healthy.
• Act as a key stakeholder in EA-led design governance: ensure solutions are buildable, supportable, and consistent.
• Maintain a clear engagement model to minimise overlap:
  • Delivery Managers own roadmap, scope, delivery outcomes, and budgets.
  • Head of Engineering owns engineering standards, capability, quality/reliability, and technical execution health.

Required Experience

Essential

• Strong engineering fundamentals and experience with application architecture, integration patterns, data platforms, DevOps toolchains, and business intelligence tooling (e.g., PowerBI).
• In-depth knowledge of modern technology stacks: experience with two or more of ServiceNow, Oracle Finance and HCM, Dynamics / CRM, Java/.NET, integration patterns, data platforms.
• Experience setting and improving engineering standards and practices across CI/CD, security in SDLC, testing, and operability.
• Proven people leadership through coaching and capability uplift across multiple teams.

Desirable

• Working knowledge of AI fundamentals and modern practices: able to spot practical use cases and drive adoption in systems and engineering workflows.

Required Profile

• Direct, transparent, and assertive leadership style.
• Decision maker and facilitator with a high engineering bar, clear accountability, and healthy collaboration with Product and EA.
• Strong written and verbal communicator who can simplify complexity for diverse audiences.

Discover some of the global benefits that empower our people to become the best version of themselves:

• Finance: Competitive salary package, share plan, company performance bonuses, value-based recognition awards, referral bonus;  
• Career Development: Career coaching, global career opportunities, non-linear career paths, internal development programmes for management and technical leadership;
• Learning Opportunities: Complex projects, rotations, internal tech communities, training, certifications, coaching, online learning platforms subscriptions, pass-it-on sessions, workshops, conferences;
• Work-Life Balance: Hybrid work and flexible working hours, employee assistance programme;
• Health: Global internal wellbeing programme, access to wellbeing apps;
• Community: Global internal tech communities, hobby clubs and interest groups, inclusion and diversity programmes, events and celebrations.

At Endava, we’re committed to creating an open, inclusive, and respectful environment where everyone feels safe, valued, and empowered to be their best. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives—because we know that inclusive teams help us deliver smarter, more innovative solutions for our customers. Hiring decisions are based on merit, skills, qualifications, and potential. If you need adjustments or support during the recruitment process, please let us know.

At Endava, we’re committed to creating an open, inclusive, and respectful environment where everyone feels safe, valued, and empowered to be their best. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives—because we know that inclusive teams help us deliver smarter, more innovative solutions for our customers. Hiring decisions are based on merit, skills, qualifications, and potential. If you need adjustments or support during the recruitment process, please let us know.