Software Engineering Manager

Job Description:

Job Title: Engineering Manager - Insurance
Team Location: Manchester

N.B. This role does not come with relocation assistance , therefore candidates must be currently based in the UK in order to be considered.

Hybrid working policy: 2 days in the Manchester office per week

Who are we?

At Booking.com, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world. We began by taking hotel bookings online over 25 years ago and we've been shaping the travel industry ever since. Today, we're building a platform that connects all parts of the trip - from accommodation to transport, tickets, tours and more.
Booking.com Insurance is the easiest way to protect your trip and travel with peace of mind. As part of our Connected Trip vision, Booking.com has ambitious growth plans for the insurance business as it looks to develop a global footprint of insurance product offerings across the group. Through innovation, industry sector knowledge and clear customer focus, the team's challenge is to substantially enhance the Insurance customer experience.
Working in collaboration with leading industry partners, our insurance products are designed to give customers assurance they have the protection they need to allow them to relax and enjoy the trip - great value cover backed by a first class experience should they need to make a claim.

Role Overview

As the Engineering Manager in the Insurance Offer Team located in Manchester, you will be building the Insurance platform in Booking.com. You will be working closely with various teams spread across verticals within Booking's frameworks to make it easier for the 8.5M people who open our apps/website everyday to purchase insurance. With a talented team of product managers, backend developers, and data analysts, you will create a seamless customer experience to increase user engagement and bookings. This is a Backend team that works with latest cloud based technologies , java is the main language used in the team. You will have the opportunity to coach and mentor a varied set of capable engineers.

The role of Engineering Manager is to primarily manage, coach and develop an engineering team (software and test engineers), ensuring the development of both (the individual and team as a whole) are in line with organisational objectives and direction. Manages all activities of an engineering scope through the direction of activities, to design new products and modify existing endpoints, ensuring that deliverables are on time and with acceptable quality. The role holder is required to analyse technology trends, human resource needs, and market demand to plan projects to ensure resilience in line with current demand and future ambition. In addition to this, the role will confer with leaders, production, key stakeholders and marketing teams to determine engineering feasibility, cost effectiveness, scalability and time-to-market for new and existing products.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties
* Managing People
* Managing Team
* Coaching/Mentoring
* End to End System Ownership
* Technical Incident Management
* Building software applications
* Architectural Guidance
* Automation and toil reduction
* Monitoring and Alerting improvements
* Critical Thinking
* Continuous Quality and Process Improvement
Qualifications & Skills

We are looking for a talented and enthusiastic Software Engineering Manager who will lead an agile team to push the boundaries on engineering brilliant solutions and contribute to shaping our new future. We expect you to have the energy and passion to deliver using a whole range of technologies and have a solid understanding of engineering principles. We also expect you to take the lead and line manage a team of Engineers. As a minimum, we expect all our Engineering Managers to have:
* High proficiency in technical leadership
* Solid understanding of building robust and resilient systems
* Strong focus on delivery management
* Strong cross team collaboration skills; you are able to work with other teams to generate objectives and measure value
* Solid understanding of how the web works starting at the request through to the response
* Proficient in the use of design patterns and frameworks such as MVC or Spring
* Solid experience of Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Continuous Delivery, and Agile
* Solid understanding of cloud technologies and how they can be leveraged to solve problems at scale
* Proficient in cloud cost management; Your skills ensure efficient allocation of resources, cost control, and strategic utilisation of cloud services to maximise value and minimise expenses.
* Quality first mind-set for writing code using techniques such as TDD, BDD and Agile
* Good understanding of security principles and writing secure code
* Solid understanding of Agile practices
Benefits & Perks: Global Impact, Personal Relevance:

Booking.com's total rewards philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. Our rewards are aimed at making it easier for you to experience all that life has to offer - all the messy, beautiful, and joyful bits - on your terms. So you can focus on what really matters. We offer competitive compensation as well as thoughtful, valuable, and even fun benefits which include:
* A great, brand new office to in the heart of Manchester
* Free breakfast and lunch
* 25 days' paid holiday plus bank holidays (rising to 28 days after 3 years of service)
* Health & well-being benefits such as mental health support, access to health insurance, etc.
* Employer contribution pension
* Industry-leading parental leave and adoption leave
* Great discounts on accommodation, car rentals and other group benefits
* From day one of your employment with us, we offer 22 weeks' fully paid leave for all new parents, regardless of gender or the way you become a parent
* Carer's leave. 10 days' fully paid leave per year for colleagues who are caring for ill family members.
* Hybrid Working (UK): We believe in office attendance at least 40% of your time whilst empowering you with the flexibility to plan where to do your best work.
ThinkInclusion: Wellbeing & Inclusion at Booking.com

Inclusion, Diversity, Belonging, Wellbeing and Volunteering (IDBWV) have been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations. Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: "At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn't just create a unique workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It's a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech." We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable adjustments to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to discuss any requirements.

Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

Application Process:
* Let's go places together: How we Hire
* N.B - This role does not come with relocation assistance

Candidate Requirements:

Key Responsibilities
* Managing PeopleIs responsible to inspire, grow and develop individuals by helping the creation of their personal development plan, leveraging available learning resources and offering stretch opportunities.Is responsible to manage underperformance by setting and reviewing performance objectives and KPIs, providing timely feedback and collaborating with HR counterparts.
* Managing TeamsIs responsible to get things done in the right way by taking ownership, being proactive and collaborating with business counterparts, peers, other craft managers and stakeholders.Is responsible to ensure delivery by tracking team health metrics and KPIs, monitoring roadmap progress, identifying blockers and resolving or escalating them.Is responsible to manage the team's stakeholders by reporting progress and blockers in a clear and timely manner.Is responsible to plan and manage headcount by actively participating and involving own team in recruitment efforts and planning processes.
* Coaching/MentoringIs responsible to coach, guide and improve the overall performance of stakeholders and colleagues at all levels, when appropriate, by sharing experience, knowledge and approaches to work.
* End to End System OwnershipIs responsible to own a service end to end by actively monitoring application health and performance, setting and monitoring relevant metrics and act accordingly when violated and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to reduce business continuity risks and bus factor by applying state-of-the-art practices and tools, and writing the appropriate documentation such as runbooks and OpDocs and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to reduce risk and obtain customer feedback by using continuous delivery and experimentation frameworks and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to independently manage an application or service by working through deployment and operations in production and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.
* Technical Incident ManagementIs responsible to address and resolve live production issues by mitigating the customer impact within SLAIs responsible to improve the overall reliability of systems by producing long term solutions through root cause analysisIs responsible to keep track of incidents by contributing to postmortem processes and logging live issues
* Building software applicationsIs responsible to build software applications by using relevant development languages and applying knowledge of systems, services and tools appropriate for the business area and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to write readable and reusable code by applying standard patterns and using standard libraries and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to refactor and simplify code by introducing design patterns when necessary and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to ensure the quality of the application by following standard testing techniques and methods that adhere to the test strategy and guide more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to maintain data security, integrity and quality by effectively following company standards and best practices, guiding more junior members of the team in this topic.Is responsible to maintain data security, integrity and quality by effectively following company standards and best practices, guiding more junior members of the team in this topic
* Architectural GuidanceIs responsible to advise product teams towards a technical solution that meets the functional, nonfunctional & architectural requirements by challenging the rationale for an application design and providing context in the wider architectural landscapeIs responsible to set a clear direction for a technical capability by evaluating and aligning the target architecture improvements, reframing architectural designs and decisions for varied stakeholder
* Critical ThinkingIs responsible to systematically identify patterns and underlying issues in complex situations, and to find solutions by applying logical and analytical thinking.Is responsible to constructively evaluate and develop ideas, plans and solutions by reviewing them, objectively taking into account external knowledge, initiating 'SMART' improvements and articulating their rationale.
* Continuous Quality and Process ImprovementIs responsible to identify opportunities for process, system and structural improvements (i.e performance gains) by examining and evaluating current process flows, methods and standards.Is responsible to design and implement relevant improvements by defining adapted/new process flows, standards, and practices that enable business performance.
* Effective CommunicationIs responsible to deliver clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience by using suitable communication mediums and language tailored to the audienceIs responsible to achieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practising active listeningIs responsible to ask relevant (follow-up) questions to properly engage with the speaker and really understand what they are saying, by applying listening and reflection techniques
* This role may require to be on an on-call rotation

Communication.Stakeholder
* Technical Staff
* Team members
* Peers in own area
* Product Manager

Communication.Type
* Information - Cooperation
* Cooperation - Persuasion
* Cooperation - Information - Persuasion
* Cooperation - Information - Persuasion

Communication.Frequency
* Frequent
* continuous
* Frequent
* Continuous

Level of Education.Level of Education
* Bachelor degree

Years of relevant Job Knowledge.Years of relevant Job Knowledge
* Advanced Knowledge (5 - 8 years)