Engineering Manager (Warsaw) Field Engineering

Mission

We are an engineering-led technology scale-up applying complex computer science techniques to change the way risk is determined within insurance, through our SaaS platform, Renew.

Renew has been carefully engineered to let users build and deploy mathematical models that can then harness complex data sets to drive better decision making in insurance.

To use a real-world example of how this has been applied - one client used Renew to price insurance for a Space X launch, wrangling all manner of weird and wonderful data to predict the risk/likelihood of every possible outcome, from arrival at the launchpad to breaking through each layer of earth's atmosphere, to a safe return home, and every potential obstacle along the way - including space debris!

After only four years we have a client-base ranging from niche specialty insurers up to some of the largest enterprise insurers globally - each with thousands of users. We achieved profitability after just three years, but given the opportunity we have to further disrupt the market and establish ourselves as the go-to modelling software/platform that can be used far beyond just insurance, we raised a Series A fundraise with Highland Europe in early 2021 to help us scale from 40 to 100 and achieve this goal!

Product Engineering at hx
Our engineering department is a melting pot of some of the brightest (and kindest!) engineers in the industry.

The level of complexity of Renew requires a highly technical, true engineering mindset so an output of this is a deeply creative, innovative environment where we push technological boundaries, both through our work and our regular (and sometimes irregular!) hackathons.

As an Engineering Manager, your mission will be to take ownership of several of our backend teams and be responsible for the three main pillars; People, Process & Technology. You will nurture, develop, coach and inspire these teams as we embark on our next phase of this mission. We are creating self managing teams or around 5-6 engineers, who are involved in the development cycle very early on. They get to decide on the "How" for each feature, taking guidance from you on things like best practices, and pragmatic approaches to which solution could be more scalable, future proof etc. Our teams are vertically aligned to value streams, responsible and owning part of the platform, and will need your help and support to attain a high level of "flow" delivering value up into those streams.

Key Responsibilities

• Line manage a group of mixed seniority backend engineers across a number of vertical teams
  • Conduct regular 1:2:1s to give and receive feedback.
  • Coaching and mentoring.
  • Personal development, including training.
  • Performance management.
  • Quarterly and annual reviews.
• Become a technical point of authority within the areas of remit of the backend engineers that you manage. Provide technical oversight, guidance and advice within your team and across the organisation. This is not a hands-on role, but a level of technical authority will be critical when interacting with the engineers. You should be able to sub-in for any of your engineers for sales calls and triage/design sessions and workshops.
• Provide technical feedback on work done by the engineers you manage, and make sure that work is aligned with hx's quality and security standards.
• Aid in driving delivery across a number of vertical value stream teams - working closely with each team's product manager, and peer front-end engineering managers.
• Work with (y)our VP of Engineering to plan the technology and architectural road-map
• Partner with Senior and/or Staff Engineers to set up and facilitate ideation sessions and technical workshops, and help product managers generate work from those.
• Help manage the visibility and execution of system work (i.e. non-feature work).
• Grow the external visibility of the product engineering team at hx, and externally via speaking engagements, conferences, blogging etc.
• Be able to help attract top engineering talent and grow (i.e. be the hiring manager) your team whilst managing team retention.
• Help grow and steer hx towards management best practices.

Initial Deliverables

• Within your first month, take on the management of the engineers in your team, have set up and conducted introductory 1:1s.
• At the end of your first month, conduct feedback sessions with (y)our VP of Engineering on each of your directs.
• Within two months, have developed a relatively deep understanding of areas of the platform that fall within the remit of the engineers you manage.
• Within three months, have developed a development plan (or adopted and understood the development of an existing plan) for each of your directs.
• Within three months have been involved with, driven and initiated ideation sessions on upcoming features and projects.

Persona

If you're the right fit for this role, you will be able to show clear evidence that you:

• Care deeply about helping people become better versions of themselves, constantly monitoring your team's workload to ensure nobody comes close to fatigue or burnout - a culture of open communication here will help us prevent this across hx!
• Are able to gain a deep technical understanding of the architecture and technical implementation of a product and platform.
• Able to identify high performing output and are able to help drive that.
• Have an open and empathetic management style.
• Are very much customer obsessed.

Experience and Skills

hx is far less interested in counting years over evidence of delivery, and our requirements reflect this.

• People management (both the good and the difficult) - 4-6 direct reports - at least 1 year managing (performance reviews, 1:1, strategy for team)
• Engineering background (backend).
  • Web services
  • Database technology - we currently use PostgreSQL (behind RDS), but any SQL and NoSQL experience is great.
  • APIs - structure and design best practices (including things like security, resilience, versioning...)
  • Platform architecture and design - we use AWS, Terraform, Docker
  • We currently use Golang, Rust, Kotlin, and Python - experience with any of them would be great, but experience using any relatively modern language is what is required.
• Processes such as Software Development Lifecycles, Personal Development planning, Enterprise customer strategies
• Experience hiring and retaining high-quality engineering talent
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Experience in growing and retaining a team.
• Foresight and planning experience.
• Bonus points for product management experience.

What do we offer?

• Competitive salary + very staff-friendly EMI share options
• £5,000 for individual and group training and conference budget
• 25 days’ holiday plus 8 bank holiday days (33 in total)
• Company pension scheme via Penfold
• Mental health and therapy provision via ⁠Spectrum.life
• Individual wellbeing allowance via Juno
• Private healthcare insurance through AXA
• Top-spec equipment (laptop, screens, mechanical keyboards, etc)
• Regular remote hackathons, lunch & learns, socials and games nights
• Team breakfasts and lunches, snacks, drinks fridge, fun office @ The Ministry
• Huge opportunity for personal development and mastery as we grow together!

What’s next?

• Initial call with our Talent team to kick things off
• Introductory call with the VP of Engineering
• Practical skills assessment
• Meet the VP of Engineering
• hx Values
• We offer!

Diversity @ hx

We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity. We’re a talented and high-energy, but low-ego and kind team who believes that the more inclusive we are, the better our work and culture is. We are not yet where we want to be in terms of balance, but it is our mission to build a team that represents a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and we are working hard towards that goal.

If you like the sound of this role but you’re not totally sure whether you’re the right fit – please apply anyway and we’ll let you know either way. Remember: you miss every shot you don’t take!

PS - Check out our blog at https://www.hyperexponential.com/blog