Here at esure, we’re no strangers to change. As one of the industry leaders in the insurance business, striving to become a world class digital insurer, we’re getting ready for more. It’s creating great new opportunities for innovative and talented industry professionals to join us at a pivotal point in our development.

It’s an opportunity you simply don’t want to miss. You can expect our investment in you to include a highly competitive package, career and development opportunities and flexible benefits built around you and your lifestyle.

The Head of Core Technology is a key member of the Technology leadership team and collaborates with other technology leaders to form the Group Technology leadership team within esure Group.

The role is responsible for the development of the technology strategy, architectural principles and patterns, software development, operational run, and continuous optimisation of the Core technology stack, which underpins all aspects of the esure business. You will also be responsible for delivering and running the AWS platform to support new applications delivered by our transformation programme. The scope includes DevOps, platform engineering, site reliability engineering and service management, and the role holder will provide technical expertise and vision to the Core technology team in the delivery and support of our core technology stack, and provide mentoring and development to engineers, architects, tech leads, service managers and people managers.

What you will do:

• Provide leadership to a team of technology professionals, driving a culture of high performance and quality in a fast-paced, large-scale agile environment
• Lead the Core technical roadmap in line with business strategies and priorities, addressing and optimising technical debt while laying down digital foundations and ensuring that architectural / technical considerations are adequately factored into roadmaps
• Provide an agile service management function to lead the availability and continuity of tech services across all parts of the business
• Monitor, lead and improve the live customer experience to ensure services are available, performant and secure at all times
• Drive the architecture, design, build, governance and continuous optimisation of the Core technology products and platforms
• Implement engineering practices, security controls, and quality assurance of all esure’s Core solutions and conduct regular reviews to ensure that patterns, standards, risk and security controls have been embedded and are functioning accurately
• Manage 3rd Party suppliers to ensure that SLAs are being met, contracts are being properly handled and that all requirements are fully scoped and delivered in line with agreements
• Perform horizon scanning and external market analysis to discover changes in the technical, legal and regulatory arenas affecting the Core technology platforms

What we are looking for:

• Proven experience of team management of up to at least 50 technical specialists with different skills and experience including architects, engineers, scrum masters and service managers
• Ensuring best engineering practices are followed during the project/product lifecycle
• Reviewing and influencing the overall transformation programme planning and scope to support optimum business outcomes while protecting the integrity of the Core Technology platforms
• Expert-level experience in architecture principles, design, build and operations of sophisticated technology ecosystems
• Extensive experience with agile SDLC practices within Scrum and Kanban environments, including SCM, build tools, test automation and CI/CD
• Experience of delivering and running high volume transactional data and event processing solutions on Amazon Web Services
• Proven experience of SRE and the use of technologies such as Kubernetes, Docker, Beanstalk and Terraform
• Experience of IT service management within an agile environment
•  Management of delivery partners to build and run technology services
• Experience with decommissioning legacy systems and integrating new systems

What we will offer you in return:

• A competitive salary that recognises your skills, experience, and potential
• 28 days annual leave plus 8 flex days (equivalent to bank holidays to be taken as and when suits you)
• Bonus scheme
• Flexible working – including hybrid working post Covid19
• Staff discount on our products
• Private medical cover for eligible colleagues

At esure, we are committed to promoting equity, inclusion and diversity. We celebrate and nurture our diversity because it makes strong business sense and because it’s the right thing to do. We are passionate about making everyone feel welcome, included and comfortable bringing their whole self to work every day.

esure cares for our people, our customers, our society and our planet. We aim to ensure all colleagues and job applicants are given equal opportunity and our company is truly representative of all sections of society and our customers. esure is an inclusive environment which provides everyone the support they need to feel included, thrive, grow, meet their goals and have some fun.