About this role
Salary: £30,000 - 50,000 per year
Requirements: We require 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years leading engineering transformation or developer experience at scale in large-scale technology organisations.We look for experience in Engineering Excellence or Centre of Excellence initiatives.We value a track record of shifting engineering culture, building coalitions, and overcoming resistance.We expect hands-on experience with the latest AI coding tools such as Copilot and Cursor, with a practical understanding of productivity gains versus hype.We seek a product mindset focused on solving problems for internal customers and using data to prioritise.We need deep understanding of cloud-native architectures, DevOps patterns, and security-by-design.We value experience influencing senior engineering leadership and driving organisation-wide technical change.We need the ability to debate architecture with Principal Engineers.We look for a collaborative, empathetic, servant-leader leadership style.We value recognised engineering leadership, technical credibility, and experience mentoring senior technical leaders and building engineering communities. Responsibilities: We lead the Software Engineering Centre of Excellence to improve engineering maturity across SD Worx.We define the collaboration between engineers and AI throughout the software development lifecycle.We promote AI-assisted and agentic software engineering in design, coding, testing, documentation, operations, and continuous improvement.We set standards for how humans and AI collaborate in designing, reviewing, and delivering software.We advise teams on modern engineering practices and establish common engineering standards, quality practices, and governance.We create non-negotiable standards for quality and security.We continuously enhance engineering capabilities by adopting modern practices, benchmarking against leading companies, and implementing maturity models.We define and execute the strategy for AI-augmented engineering and standardise AI as a core competency.We modernise our approach to legacy systems and use AI to accelerate refactoring and reduce technical debt.We define metrics for AI-augmented productivity, code quality, and SDLC improvement.We act as the primary advisor to leadership on emerging industry standards in software engineering.We design and deploy Engineering Crews to solve bottlenecks and upskill teams.We cultivate a culture of continuous improvement using data-driven insights.We manage the maturity model for our internal engineering practices.We improve Developer Experience by reducing friction and increasing engineering effectiveness.We advise leadership on engineering trends, technology strategy, and engineering organisational design.We lead the SD Worx Campus team and Practice Guilds to drive peer-to-peer learning and standardisation.We design career paths that reward both deep specialisation and high-leverage generalists.We set and track success metrics such as Engineering Maturity Index, AI Adoption Velocity, Quality & Security Velocity, and DevEx Satisfaction. Technologies: AICloudCopilotCursorDevOpsSecurityAgentic AIAI AgentsArchitectBackendFrontendGitHub More:
We are SD Worx, a leading payroll and HR technology company in Europe, serving millions of employees in over 27 countries. We are transforming from a traditional SaaS software organisation into an AI-native technology company, with a strategic focus on engineering excellence, AI adoption, and modern standards. This is a high-impact leadership role within our Software Engineering Centre of Excellence, where we provide the budget and C-level sponsorship to drive meaningful change across our organisation. We offer a dynamic environment with flexible working hours and working from home, workation from any SD Worx location for up to 4 weeks per year within the EU, free language courses during working hours, a referral programme, learning opportunities through an individual development plan and professional training, and strong career growth opportunities. As this is an international role open in multiple countries, the full benefits package depends on the specific location. We value diversity and inclusion and welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of origin, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, ethnic or social background, or stage of life.
last updated 36 week of 2026