Software Development Manager

• Legal Entity:
  The Random House Group Limited
• Compensation: up to GBP 100,000 - yearly

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Software Development Manager to join our Technology team here s role is offered on a permanent basis from our office in Embassy Gardens, London.

This is a hands-on leadership role, combining people management with technical direction. You’ll lead and develop our developer community, helping us to turn technical strategy and agreed architecture into consistent engineering standards and reliable delivery.

A key focus of the role will be supporting the modernisation of our integration landscape, moving away from isolated Logic Apps and point-to-point integrations towards reusable .NET services, APIs and event-driven solutions, while ensuring the stability and continuity of our existing live services.

Around 70% of your time will be focused on people leadership, capability building, engineering standards and delivery leadership, with around 30% dedicated to purposeful hands‑on technical contribution. It’s a role for someone who enjoys leading others while staying close enough to the technology to provide credible technical guidance and support.

About the team

The Technology team provides expertise and effective solutions to Penguin Random House. We integrate flexibility and agility which supports our consistent way of working. We set ourselves up for success by holding ourselves accountable and welcoming change. Each member of the Technology team brings skill and initiative to their role; we take personal ownership within a one team culture, working collaboratively to meet expectations from our stakeholders who trust us to deliver.

The role

Key responsibilities:

Lead, support and develop our permanent software developers across Integration Services, including regular 1:1s, objective setting, development planning, performance management and pastoral support.

Own recruitment, onboarding, retention and succession planning for the developer community, while ensuring contractors work effectively within agreed team standards and ways of working.

Build capability against our target architecture and delivery pipeline, identifying skills gaps and creating practical opportunities for learning, coaching and delegated leadership.

Use your strong C# and .NET expertise to support code and design reviews, pairing, proof‑of‑concepts and complex technical problem‑solving where your input adds the most value.

Define and maintain engineering standards, development controls and quality gates, including CI/CD, automated testing, secure development, observability and operational readiness.

Establish responsible standards for AI‑assisted development, covering validation, security, data handling, attribution and human accountability.

Improve developer tooling, source control, pipelines and work tracking where this strengthens delivery, maintainability and control.

Lead healthy Agile delivery across the squads, ensuring effective planning, refinement, reviews, retrospectives and day‑to‑day coordination, while coaching others to take on greater delivery leadership as teams mature.

Support the Head of Integration Services with developer allocation across business‑as‑usual and project work, balancing service continuity, strategic priorities, individual development and sustainable capacity.

Monitor squad health, capacity, dependencies and delivery risks, providing clear reporting and working with product, programme and engineering stakeholders to resolve constraints.

Own developer deployment, engineering standards and implementation quality within approved architecture, while working closely with Technical Solution Architects, Senior Developers, Squad Leads, Delivery Managers and…