VP Engineering

Location:

Birmingham : 1 Trinity Park :
Bi

LRQA is a leading global assurance partner. We help clients manage risk and build safer, more secure and more sustainable businesses through certification, inspection, cybersecurity and advisory services. Digital Transformation is modernising the technology, products and platforms that underpin these services, and engineering is central to that effort.

• Lead the adoption of AI in engineering: set the direction for AI-assisted development and embed it in how the teams design, build and test.
• Put in place the foundations that make it work at scale: the engineering standards, golden paths, repository structure, documentation‑as‑code and reusable scaffolding that let both engineers and AI tooling move quickly and safely.

• Drive automation across the software lifecycle, from build and test to release, so delivery is faster, more consistent and less manual.
• Set the engineering practices that support faster, more reliable software flow (Continuous Delivery, CI/CD, automated testing and release readiness) as the standard the teams build to, working with Infrastructure/Dev Ops and others.

• Define the engineering performance and productivity framework and the target ambition (DORA, cycle time, time to release), and drive sustained improvement working through the Head of Development and the other leaders.
• Make this a genuine step‑change in throughput and quality, not an incremental tidy‑up.

• Set the software engineering strategy and multi‑year technical roadmap, aligned to the digital and business strategy.
• Sequence re‑platforming and capability change against portfolio priorities, including readiness for the next phase of scale‑up.

• Set the software engineering standards, tooling and technology‑stack direction the function builds to.
• Make build‑versus‑buy and platform decisions at portfolio level.
• Set the software engineering architecture direction across Digital Transformation and hold cross‑estate coherence.
• Set the design standards systems must meet for security, reliability, performance, cost and operability.
• Act as the escalation and decision point for the most significant technical and design choices across the estate.
• Set the direction for integration delivery across the estate, including the shared data and integration layer and its event‑driven patterns.

• Lead, develop and set direction for the Head of Development, the Cyber Development Lead and the Enterprise Architect.
• Set the priorities and trade‑offs that span the teams, and clear the senior blockers above them.
• Own software engineering organisation design and the operating model as the function scales.

• Act as the senior software engineering voice alongside the CDO and across the executive.
• Provide technical advice and assurance on major investment, build‑versus‑buy and platform decisions, and make engineering’s direction, value and constraints understood at leadership level.

• A genuine step‑change in engineering productivity and time to release, measured through DORA and cycle‑time metrics and visibly improving.
• AI‑assisted engineering adopted across the teams, on sound foundations (standards, golden paths, scaffolding) that make it work at scale.
• Automation embedded across the software lifecycle, reducing manual effort and variability.
• A clear engineering strategy, technical roadmap and architecture direction, in use across the function.
• Engineering standards, tooling and stack direction set and applied consistently across the estate.
• Significant designs and major technical decisions agreed cleanly and consistently across the estate.
• An engineering operating model and team structure that scales with the business.

• Software Engineering leadership at scale: led engineering functions and driven a step‑change in how they build, not only run delivery.
• AI‑assisted engineering: real experience introducing AI and automation…