Engineering Manager - NESO

About the Role

National Energy System Operator (NESO) recognises the potential of bright and talented individuals, and we encourage you to join us as Great Britain's energy system undergoes an ambitious, exciting, and vital transformation. Together with industry, we are creating a cleaner, more sustainable energy future.

The Engineering Managers for OBP will be responsible for owning and advancing the engineering practice within one of the core product areas in the Balancing Transformation programme. This role is suited to an engineering leader with deep hands‑on experience, strong architectural awareness, and proven capability operating in multi‑vendor delivery environments.

You will guide engineering excellence, ensure high‑quality product delivery, and manage cross‑functional engineering teams—including vendor engineers—within a complex, high‑performing ecosystem. Your leadership will directly influence product reliability, delivery velocity, engineering culture, and long‑term technical strategy.

This role can be based from Wokingham, and we continue to offer hybrid working from office and home. We are open to full‑time and part‑time applicants, as well as flexible working arrangements.

• Own and evolve the engineering practice for a defined OBP product area within the Balancing Transformation Programme.
• Provide strong technical leadership across distributed, multi‑vendor engineering teams.
• Define and uphold engineering standards, development guardrails, reusable patterns, and microservice best practices.
• Translate architectural direction into actionable engineering plans and ensure high‑quality, production‑ready delivery.
• Drive improvements in test automation, CI/CD, observability, and Dev Ops maturity.
• Ensure clear documentation and remediation planning for technical debt.
• Proactively manage engineering risks, integration dependencies, and quality across internal and vendor teams.
• Partner with Product Managers, Solution Architects, Delivery Managers, and UX to shape product delivery and technical roadmap.
• Grow and empower engineering leads by providing frameworks, coaching, and technical direction that enables them to challenge and uplift their squads.

• Strong software engineering background with hands‑on experience in microservices or distributed system architectures
  .
• End‑to‑end engineering proficiency including CI/CD pipelines, Dev Ops tooling, automated testing, observability, and operational readiness.
• Deep expertise in one of the following technical areas:
  • Data Science or Optimisation / Planning Models
  • Real‑time or event‑driven systems
  • Transactional systems
  • Responsive front‑end engineering and modern UI frameworks
• Demonstrated ability to drive delivery
  , navigate ambiguity, and make pragmatic engineering decisions.
• Strong leadership and people management skills with experience mentoring engineering leads and multi‑vendor teams.
• Ability to rapidly understand business context, product domain, and complex problem statements, and translate them into engineering direction.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to set expectations, challenge constructively, and strengthen team culture.

• Experience working in highly regulated, mission‑critical, or real‑time operational environments.
• Knowledge of power systems, Balancing Mechanism, or energy industry domains.
• Familiarity with cloud‑native architectures, event streaming, or large‑scale data platforms.
• Background in designing or supporting optimisation engines, forecasting models, or decision‑support tools.
• Prior experience improving engineering maturity across multiple delivery partners.

Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At NESO, we are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace for everyone. So, if you're excited about this role but your experience or qualifications don't match the job description exactly, we encourage you to apply anyway.

You might just be the right person for our growing business in this role or another one.

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