Engineering Manager

TL;DR

Engineering Manager: Leading delivery and technical direction for a core short-term car insurance product with an accent on technical depth, outcome-focused delivery ownership, and high-EQ people leadership. Focus on validating ideas early, navigating complex trade-offs, unblocking engineers through technical decision-making, and building a high-performing engineering environment.

Location: Farringdon, Greater London (Hybrid) — work from home is welcome; come into the London office a couple of times a month for team strategy days and socials.

Salary: £94,000 - £110,000 + benefits

Company

hirify.global provides short-term car insurance through a mobile app, building flexible, customer-focused insurance products.

What you will do

• Provide technical credibility for the core product engineering team (5–7 direct reports), diving into codebases when needed to unblock work.
• Own delivery outcomes with a Product Manager: shape valuable, feasible, commercially meaningful work and validate ideas early from a technical perspective.
• Challenge estimations, assumptions, and technical decisions; guide the team through trade-offs (speed vs quality, scope vs impact, short-term vs long-term).
• Lead people development through coaching, feedback, mentorship, and regular 1:1s; spot and address burnout, disengagement, and performance issues.
• Improve how the team operates technically, operationally, and culturally; collaborate with other Engineering Managers to raise the bar across the organization.
• Contribute to hiring, onboarding, planning, and resourcing by considering dependencies and shared squad needs across engineering.

Requirements

• Experience as an Engineering Manager, or as a Tech Lead/Principal Engineer who has taken on people management responsibilities.
• Strong technical depth with credibility as a software engineer (ideally backend or full stack) and comfort challenging engineers constructively.
• Ability to communicate trade-offs and decisions clearly and quickly with Engineering, Product, and key business stakeholders.
• Proactive people leadership mindset: create psychologically safe, high-performing teams and invest in growth and wellbeing.
• Experience working closely with Product to shape solutions (not just deliver them) and thinking beyond the immediate team toward scalability and customer/business impact.
• Comfort with a lean, fast-moving cross-functional product environment.

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated environments (e.g., fintech, insurtech, healthtech).
• Experience contributing to engineering culture, standards, or strategy beyond the immediate team.
• Experience delivering mobile-first product experiences in a collaborative trio model (Product Management & Design).

Culture & Benefits

• Very flexible WFH setup; office attendance only a couple of times per month for team strategy days and socials.
• Four-day work week with Fridays off.
• Private medical insurance with Bupa, plus health/WFH/wellbeing budget and mental health & coaching support via Oliva.
• Professional development budget, parental leave and pay enhancements, and cycle-to-work scheme.
• 20.5 days holiday per year (prorated for the 4DWW) plus public holidays; increases with each year.
• Additional perks and discounts (Perkbox), and £100/month towards hirify.global car insurance.

Hiring process

• Initial 60-minute chat with the People Team.
• 90-minute deep dive + technical session with the Head of Engineering and team.
• 45-minute key stakeholder review with the CTO, followed by a 30-minute founders chat with the CEO.