Head of Application Engineering

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A career at Janus Henderson is more than a job, it’s about investing in a brighter future together .

Our Mission at Janus Henderson is to help clients define and achieve superior financial outcomes through differentiated insights, disciplined investments, and world-class service. We will do this by protecting and growing our core business, amplifying our strengths and diversifying where we have the right.

Our Values are key to driving our success, and are at the heart of everything we do:

Clients Come First
- Always | Execution Supersedes Intention | Together We Win | Diversity Improves Results | Truth Builds Trust

If our mission, values, and purpose align with your own, we would love to hear from you!

Application Engineering is the backbone of how Janus Henderson builds, delivers, and evolves the technology platforms that power investment management, client servicing, and global distribution. As Head of Application Engineering, you will set the strategic direction for the firm's application development function, leading a high-performing engineering organisation that designs, builds, and operates mission-critical systems at enterprise scale.

A central focus of the role is driving the modernisation of the firm's application landscape - accelerating cloud-native adoption, embedding AI and machine learning capabilities into core platforms, and establishing the engineering practices that enable teams to ship high-quality software rapidly and reliably. You will be accountable for the technical health of the application estate, from architecture and code quality through to production resilience and operational excellence.

Alongside the modernisation agenda, you will partner closely with Product Management, Infrastructure, Data Engineering, and business stakeholders across Investments, Distribution, and Operations to ensure that engineering efforts are tightly aligned to commercial outcomes. You will be the senior technical voice that translates business ambition into engineering strategy and execution.

Your goal is to build a world-class application engineering function that delivers scalable, secure, and innovative technology solutions. Your aim is to be a trusted technology leader who earns credibility through execution, cultivates engineering talent, and drives measurable business impact through technology excellence.

• Define and own the multi-year engineering strategy for the firm's application portfolio, ensuring alignment with enterprise technology and business priorities.
• Establish and evolve the target architecture for application platforms, driving the transition from legacy systems to cloud-native, microservices-based, and event-driven architectures.
• Set the bar for engineering excellence - defining standards for code quality, testing, CI/CD, observability, and production readiness across all application teams.
• Articulate a clear technology roadmap that balances innovation (AI/ML integration, automation, modern tooling) with operational stability and risk management.
• Lead end-to-end delivery of the firm's application modernisation programme, from assessment and architecture through build, migration, testing, and production cutover.
• Drive the adoption of cloud-native services (Azure/AWS), containerisation (Kubernetes, Docker), and infrastructure-as-code across the application estate.
• Oversee the design and implementation of API-first integration patterns, enabling seamless connectivity between internal platforms, third-party systems, and client-facing applications.
• Partner with Data Engineering and Data Science teams to embed AI and machine learning capabilities into core applications - including intelligent automation, natural language processing, and predictive analytics features.
• Establish and enforce secure software development lifecycle (SDLC) practices, including threat modelling, static and dynamic analysis, dependency scanning, and secure deployment pipelines.
• Ensure production systems meet stringent SLA targets for availability, latency, and throughput, implementing robust incident management, on-call processes,…