Engineering Manager (Python) - AI/ML SaaS Platform

Engineering Manager (Python) - AI/ML SaaS Platform

Base pay range

Engineering Manager - London OR Manchester - Salary up to £120k

We’re hiring a Hands-On Engineering Manager with deep technical leadership experience across Python, large-scale data systems, and modern AWS infrastructure. You’ll lead a squad of 4 engineers, guiding them through complex technical decisions and helping them deliver high-performance, data-intensive systems operating over hundreds of millions to billions of rows.

The product itself is an AI/ML-driven SaaS platform, and your contributions will train new models, enabling new features and having large greenfield elements to it.

This role blends hands-on technical context with people leadership, delivery focus, and architectural oversight. You’ll drive engineering excellence, ensure high reliability, and cultivate a culture that values clarity, ownership, and strong execution.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead and develop a squad of 4 engineers, supporting growth, coaching, and high-quality delivery.
• Set technical direction across Python services, distributed systems, and large-scale data processing.
• Work heavily with AWS - especially Redshift, Lambda, ECS, S3, plus data formats like Parquet.
• Shape high-throughput data pipelines and SQL-based workflows, ensuring scalability and performance.
• Run technical design reviews, guide architecture decisions, and support engineers in navigating trade-offs around performance, cost, and reliability.
• Champion operational excellence - strong observability, testing discipline, incident response, and SLO ownership.
• Collaborate with Product & Design to define technical requirements, prioritise road-maps, and drive measurable outcomes.

Tech Environment You’ll Influence

• Primary language: Python
• AWS stack: Redshift, Lambda, ECS, S3
• Scale: systems processing hundreds of millions to billions of rows
• Focus areas: performance tuning, reliability, cost optimisation, architectural clarity

What You’ll Bring

• Prior experience as an Engineering Manager or Tech Lead managing small, high-performing engineering teams.
• Strong technical background in Python, large-scale data systems, and cloud-native architectures (ideally AWS).
• Experience owning and improving complex data pipelines and high-throughput systems.
• Ability to coach engineers across multiple levels while maintaining hands-on architectural and design credibility.
• Excellent delivery management - simplifying ambiguity, unblocking dependencies, and driving predictable execution.

What Success Looks Like

• Your squad of 4 consistently delivers high-quality software and scalable data pipelines with predictable velocity.
• Clear improvements in system reliability, throughput, and cost efficiency.
• Strong engineering discipline across design, testing, observability, and incident management.
• Improved technical foundations and reduced operational toil.
• Clear, thoughtful communication and alignment across engineering, product, and design.

Seniority level

Mid-Senior level

Employment type

Full-time

Job function

Staffing and Recruiting

• Prior experience as an Engineering Manager or Tech Lead managing small, high-performing engineering teams.
• Strong technical background in Python, large-scale data systems, and cloud-native architectures (ideally AWS).
• Experience owning and improving complex data pipelines and high-throughput systems.
• Ability to coach engineers across multiple levels while maintaining hands-on architectural and design credibility.
• Excellent delivery management - simplifying ambiguity, unblocking dependencies, and driving predictable execution., * Your squad of 4 consistently delivers high-quality software and scalable data pipelines with predictable velocity.
• Clear improvements in system reliability, throughput, and cost efficiency.
• Strong engineering discipline across design, testing, observability, and incident management.
• Improved technical foundations and reduced operational toil.
• Clear, thoughtful communication and alignment across engineering, product, and design.