Job Description
At R3 we’re planning to change the world. You will be working at the cutting edge of permissioned blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as it transforms the future of business.
Corda, R3’s flagship product, is a DLT platform designed for running complex workflows between businesses, without any centralized points of control. Designed for the needs of financial markets infrastructures, it’s trusted by banks, stock exchanges, insurance companies, payments companies, and others to deliver hugely reliable and scalable systems.
Our Corda Platform team is responsible for delivering the core architecture, functionality, and roadmap deliverables for Corda. In order to do this, our team is expanding and we’re looking for an experienced manager of managers to help lead this hugely talented engineering team.
Role Summary
The Corda Platform team is growing quickly to meet the needs of our customers and is set to have ~50 people by the end of 2023, with engineers in the UK and Ireland.
Reporting to the Head of Engineering for Corda’s Core Platform, as Principal Engineering Manager (Corda Platform) you will be responsible for the roadmap and delivery of 4 software teams, plus the career growth of ~20 software engineers managed through 4 software managers. You will ensure we have the right strategy, people, skills, architecture, and technology to deliver the Corda of the future – a distributed ledger with huge throughput, reliability and uptime guarantees for the most demanding of R3 customers and networks of customers. You will also take responsibility for the quality and delivery within your domain, plus help grow and mentor the software engineers within your teams.
Key Responsibilities (What Will I Do Most Often?)- Work with your manager to ensure that the Corda Platform team grows in a scalable way, supporting the needs of our customers whilst ensuring that R3 continues to be an enjoyable and rewarding place to work.
- Line manage the Corda Platform engineering managers that report into you and be a role model for them and other managers in R3.
- Work closely with product and program managers to ensure we have a clear vision of the software we’re building and how it will be built by the engineering teams.
- Own the delivery of the Corda Platform teams reporting to you, ensuring we produce a roadmap of key deliverables, report on progress towards agreed delivery dates, and deliver with a very high-quality level.
- Lead hiring in your space to ensure we have high-calibre talent to build our software.
- Provide technical leadership.
- Ensure our product codebase is well maintained, develops in a way that makes it easy to work with, and mitigates any potential risks from third party dependencies.
- Coach, mentor, and hold one-to-ones with your team members to help them in both the work they are doing, and to support their longer-term career development.
- Collaborate with many other people and teams across the company to ensure they understand any needs, progress, and capabilities of the software your team is building. Help shape programs of work to ensure the needs of both your team and those other teams are all met.
- Encourage a culture of ownership in which your engineers feel empowered to make design choices, learn from successes and failures, and always seek to build better and more capable new versions of software.
- Run regular retrospectives to ensure Corda Platform teams, and the wider R3 engineering teams, can improve through learning about things that have worked better, worse, or as anticipated.
- Foster a culture of openness and mutual success.
- Collaborate with your manager and peers to shape the strategy of the Corda Platform team and provide data and insights into the wider strategic planning process within the Corda Business Unit.
- Jointly plan the product roadmap with colleagues in the Product Management, QA, and Engineering Services teams. This may involve occasional travel between our Dublin and London offices.
- Represent the Corda Platform engineering team during cross-team alignments, retrospectives, and technical discussion forums.
- Present and discuss the work of your team with our strategically important customers, often with the support of our Professional Services team.
- Contribute towards company-wide initiatives that will help R3 improve its ability to deliver software and improve the careers of its employees.
- Periodic out-of-hours escalation.
- You have a solid technical background and understand the journey your team is on. They know you’ve walked in their shoes in the past.
- You have worked in domains where high-availability and performance matters.
- You have seen how to get the best from people, how things can go wrong, and know the difference.
- You are a passionate line manager who cares about people and helping them achieve their best results.
- You care about quality, and engineering agility, and have a desire to provide the best possible products and capabilities for our customers.
- You have high levels of personal resilience and can help your team cope with changing priorities and complexity.
- You are calm and a reassuring leader, even under pressure.
- You have great communication skills and are a confident presenter.