Head of Engineering Academy

Role Overview

The Head of Engineering Academy role will be responsible for the end-to-end design, delivery, and continuous evolution of the Engineering Academy. The role ensures that the Academy consistently develops customer-centric, product-aware, and business-aligned engineers who can contribute meaningfully to real teams from day one.

This role is accountable for program quality, cross-functional integration, participant experience and outcomes, scalability, and the early-career talent pipeline feeding into the organization's engineering teams.

The Head of Academy acts as the single point of ownership for the Academy's vision, standards, delivery model, and impact.

Key Responsibilities

Academy Design & Curriculum Ownership:
Own and continuously refine the Engineering Academy curriculum across all phases, including engineering foundations, product and business immersion, hands-on delivery, and embedded team experience.
Ensure curriculum alignment with the product roadmap, technical direction, customer needs, and business priorities.
Regularly review and update learning content to reflect evolving technologies, practices, and organizational goals.
Cross-Functional Integration:
Partner with Customer Service, Product, Marketing, Finance, and Operations to define meaningful, real-world tasks for Academy participants.
Ensure participant work delivers value to teams while remaining appropriately scoped, supervised, and safe.
Act as the single point of accountability for cross-functional engagement within the Academy.
Early Talent Pipeline & University Partnerships:
Collaborate closely with People & Culture to build and maintain relationships with selected universities and technical institutions.
Contribute to defining graduate profiles, outreach strategies, and selection criteria aligned with Academy and engineering needs.
Support campus engagement activities including guest lectures, workshops, curriculum collaboration, and Academy branding initiatives.
Delivery Quality & Engineering Standards:
Ensure participants produce production-quality work aligned with established engineering best practices.
Define and enforce standards for code quality, testing, documentation, security, reliability, and responsible AI usage.
Ensure verification, ownership, and accountability are embedded throughout the learning journey.
Participant Experience & Development:
Own the participant journey from onboarding through graduation, with clear expectations, milestones, and feedback mechanisms.
Provide coaching and guidance, identify skill gaps early, and foster a strong, inclusive, and psychologically safe learning culture.
Tutor, Mentor & Buddy Network:
Identify, onboard, and support engineering tutors, business tutors, and team buddies.
Enable mentors with guidance on coaching junior engineers, providing effective feedback, and balancing Academy involvement with team responsibilities.
Measurement & Outcomes:
Define and track success metrics such as graduation rate, time to first meaningful pull request, time to independent task ownership, cross-functional satisfaction, and business impact.
Use data, feedback, and outcomes to continuously improve Academy effectiveness and relevance.
Transition & Placement:
Own the transition from Academy to product teams, including readiness assessments, placement recommendations, and individual 6–12 month development plans.
Partner with Engineering Managers to ensure smooth onboarding, expectation alignment, and early success.
Scaling & Sustainability:
Design the Academy to scale across cohorts, roles, and teams.
Document processes, templates, playbooks, and operating models to ensure consistency and long-term sustainability.

Educational Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline or above
Formal training or certification in Learning & Development, Instructional Design, Coaching, or Program Management is a strong plus.

Experience & Skills

Proven experience designing, launching, and running structured learning programs such as engineering academies, bootcamps, graduate programs, or internal training initiatives.
Strong people-centric leadership with demonstrated ability to coach, mentor, and develop early-career talent.
Excellent organisational and program management skills, with experience running multi-month, cohort-based programs.
Strong teaching and facilitation capabilities, with the ability to explain complex topics clearly and adapt to diverse learning styles.
Experience creating psychologically safe learning environments with clear expectations, feedback loops, and accountability.
Ability to collaborate effectively with engineering leaders, business teams, and People & Culture without reliance on formal authority.
Experience working with universities or early-career talent pipelines is highly desirable.
Solid technical and product literacy sufficient to understand engineering work, learning objectives, and quality standards (deep specialisation not…