Head of Development

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The Company

Leighton is an awarding winning integrated technology business. We use vision, creativity and expertise to connect businesses with their customers and drive commercial success across multiple touch points. Working with us isn’t just about achieving the end result, it’s about what we do to get there, changing the way you think about your business and benefits of digital forever.

We work with a range of high profile brands such as British Airways, Home Group and IKEA, as well as smaller growing companies. This represents a very exciting time for Leighton with the recent appointment of a new Chief Executive and a commitment to significant investment in order to drive the business forward. To support our next stage of growth we are looking to expand our technical team.

Job Summary

As part of our Operational Management Team you will be responsible for the management of our development team and the delivery of all development activities across our customer portfolio. You will lead and coach a distributed team of developers and testers taking responsibility for the delivery of our software projects. You will be responsible for establishing and agreeing best practice to improve the quality, pace, efficiency and predictability of software delivery.

Main Duties & Responsibilities

Leadership and management of our team of software developers and testers supporting them in building industry leading, accessible, robust and innovative software solutions that exceed our customers’ expectations.

Recruit and manage an amazing team of highly motivated developers taking responsibility for talent management, succession planning, managing skills gaps, reducing key person dependencies and supporting individual learning/training.

To plan for inducting new members into the team and onboard them as quickly as possible to support our planned growth

Monitoring and maintaining the Development Team’s competency matrix, ensuring it remains relevant both to the commercial interests of Leighton and the professional development of the team.

Monitor and assess the demands for resources across the department and ensure appropriate employee levels to meet the customer demands whilst ensuring all members of the team achieve their targets for utilisation and personal development.

Identify enhancements to existing development practices and processes to enable Leighton to improve, improve, improve.

Work with Business Analysts, Project Managers, Enterprise Architects and Team Leaders to give clear direction of best practices in developing our exceptional solutions.

Work with the Testing team to define and deliver on best practice Quality Assurance approaches within the Development Department.

Ensure Quality Assurance occurs on projects and that lessons learned are both surfaced and taken forward as meaningful action.

Work with the Enterprise Architect and Business Analysts to ensure that specification of client requirements follows industry best practices, allowing the development department to deliver functionally with pace and quality.

Participation as a member of the Operational Management Team.

To contribute regularly to discussions regarding internal process and system improvements in order to ensure

To lead in technical estimates, analysis and specifications to make sure they are complete and accurate.

To support the commercial team with pre sale activities, contributing to RFPs where appropriate and assisting in large pitches to potential clients where required.

Relationships

This role reports into the CEO and sits on our Operational Management Team alongside the Head of Project Delivery and Creative Director. The role leads a growing department of circa 25 developers, testers and technical design leads.

Person Specification

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

You will be able to demonstrate:

Significant and proven commercial experience in managing software development teams, with experience in a commercial agile environment. Ideally you will have worked in an environment with external customers.

Proven capability in building delivery structures and high performing teams, managing team dynamics, building team relationships, mentoring team members and delivering feedback.

Experience in release planning, estimation, capacity planning and managing risks in a multi team environment.

Great written and verbal communication skills with both customers and team members.

Behaviours & Competencies

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate:

A passion for digital and what it can do for us and our customers, from the web to the physical world.

A committed team player who demonstrates exceptional communication, interpersonal skills and consistent high energy levels, who recognises the importance of people in technology solutions and cares about their team.

A natural curiosity and a desire to ask questions and improve.

You will act with honesty and truth always.

A desire to improve and be the best version of yourself that you can be.

What We Offer

We value our team and to attract exceptional people we offer an excellent package. You can look forward to:

A competitive salary this will be dependent on experience.

An annual review, with quarterly 1-2-1’s.

A contributory pension scheme we match 2% - 5%

A death in service benefit

25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays (3 must be reserved for Christmas).

A flexible approach to working core hours 10:00 - 12:00 and 14:00-16:00.

Continuous personal development, career path and training.

It’s the Little Things

Free Fruit delivered on a weekly basis to all sites.

Organised free social club events

Charity fundraising opportunities

Sporting Events - football, yoga, pilates…

Festive day at Christmas time

Funding for training books for personal development

If you want to join a team that is ambitious, challenging, hardworking and fun, please contact our Recruitment Team supplying your CV and a cover letter outlining the reason and motivation for you applying for the position and details of your salary/benefit package by clicking the APPLY button.