Lead Product Engineering

Location: Bracknell, United Kingdom; place of work at Jealott's Hill International Research Centre

Company

Syngenta is a global agriculture company supporting crop protection research and development through a modern engineering organisation.

What you will do

• Set engineering direction, standards, and technical priorities across value-stream application teams.
• Lead and support Staff Engineers and Engineering Managers through clear expectations, coaching, and accountability.
• Partner with R&D Product Managers and domain leaders to translate priorities into engineering plans and surface risks.
• Coordinate delivery, architecture, quality, team health, cross-functional planning, and architectural governance.
• Manage engineering hiring, onboarding, development, retention, budgets, and resource allocation.
• Define engineering KPIs, reduce technical debt, mentor leaders, and evaluate emerging technologies and practices.

Requirements

• Strong engineering leadership experience across multiple teams or product areas, with technical credibility to engage senior engineers.
• Proven people leadership experience, including management of engineering leaders and support for senior individual contributors.
• Strong product engineering and delivery judgment, connecting customer and product priorities with sustainable technical execution.
• Experience hiring and developing engineering talent, setting standards, and creating an effective team environment.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, including explaining trade-offs to product, science, and technology partners.
• Collaborative and pragmatic leadership style with confidence in decision-making, learning, and improvement.
• Experience managing budgets and resource allocation, optimizing utilization, and aligning resources with organizational priorities.
• Ability to define, track, and act on engineering metrics and KPIs for productivity, quality, and team engagement.
• Knowledge of modern software architecture patterns, technical debt management, system design, cross-organizational collaboration, and complex stakeholder governance.

Culture & Benefits

• Permanent position with flexible working.
• Benefits include a pension scheme, bonus scheme, private medical insurance, and life insurance.
• Up to 31.5 days of annual holiday.
• International environment with impactful work supporting the agricultural sector and chemical industry.
• Learning culture with a wide range of training options.