Practice Lead – Systems Engineering

Practice Lead
- Future Systems Engineering

Practice Leads combine deep engineering judgement with commercial instinct, and use both to shape where Softwire's Future Systems Engineering service goes next.

Location:

Manchester, Cambridge, London

Softwire is a leading UK technology and strategy consultancy. From enterprise to government, we help visionary organisations turn strategic ambitions into results  practices cover AI transformation, data platforms, systems engineering, advanced CX and experience design.

Softwire was founded on one simple idea: be the outstanding place to work for smart, passionate technologists who want to make an impact. Attract the best, create a culture where people thrive, and offer our customers access to capabilities that are truly market-leading.

And it seems to be working
- We were recently voted number 1 company to work for in the UK at the Best Company awards; we employ outstanding people across all capabilities (typical destinations after Softwire include Google, Deep Mind, start-up founder, algorithmic trading, and AI research roles); and we have helped our clients deliver some of the hardest, most interesting tech programmes, across private and public sectors.

A big part of this is our culture and values, and we are looking for people who share our core beliefs about what makes a great place to work:

• That if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly
• That work should be fulfilling but can also be fun
• That kindness matters and should be extended to employees and clients alike
• That by being trusting and trustworthy as an organisation and as individuals, we can dispense with tedious bureaucracy and rules

Future Systems Engineering is one of Softwire's four services, alongside AI Transformation, Data Strategy & Platforms, and Digital Product & Customer Experience. It covers technical strategy and architecture, legacy modernisation, cloud platform engineering, security architecture and resilience, and cost management, largely for regulated industries and critical national infrastructure.

Internally, we call our services Practices, which is where this role title comes from.

The Practice Lead owns and develops that service. You will make sure what we offer clients remains relevant three years from now, and that our engineers can deliver it. The work falls into four parts:

• Articulate our service. Support the go-to-market teams selling Future Systems Engineering into our sectors: energy and utilities, financial services, government, insurance.
• Discern what is coming next. Track technology shifts, vendor moves, regulatory change and client demand signals, and form a view on what they mean for us.
• Enable new kinds of work. Develop the approaches, offerings and commercial propositions that let us take on engagements we have not run before.
• Strengthen our capability. Run the systems engineering Community of Practice, spread good ideas between accounts, and raise the technical bar across the company.

You will split your time roughly evenly between billable client work and practice development, managing that balance yourself. The client work sits mostly at the front of engagements: early conversations, discovery, architecture reviews, workshops and diagnostics, then enabling and supporting the delivery teams who run the resulting programmes.

Practice Leads work as a team, one per service, and report to the CTO. They sit in an office of the CTO alongside our two heads of capability and Vendor Relations. You will also build a pod of three to five hands-on mid-level and senior technical consultants who move quickly into tactical engagements, take new practice ideas forward, and support your work more widely.

Beyond that pod, your influence rests on credibility with engineers and with client executives, so you will need to stay close enough to the technology to hold both conversations properly.

Practice development, around half your time:

• Owning the Future Systems Engineering proposition: what we sell, how we describe it, how we price it, and how it changes over time.
• Deciding what we should be able to do in three years that we cannot do today, and building the offerings, approaches and skills that get us there.
• Leading Softwire's thought leadership on systems engineering: writing, speaking at events, taking part in industry forums, and directing a pipeline of content produced by colleagues.
• Coordinating the systems engineering Community of Practice, and developing the skills and standards of engineers across our accounts.
• Building and directing a small pod of hands-on technical consultants who take practice ideas from proposition through to first delivery.

Client work and go-to-market, around half your time:

• Leading the technical shaping of bids and pitches that call on Future Systems Engineering: running early-stage client conversations alongside Client Directors, setting the solution direction, and writing the technical sections of proposals.
• Running discovery…