Head of Developer

We are looking for an accomplished Head of Developer Experience to lead our platform and delivery-enablement agenda. This senior leadership role reports to the Director of IT Strategy & Architecture and has two direct reports: the Platform Engineering Manager and the Agile Practices & Delivery Lead. The Head of Developer Experience will improve how we deliver product-aligned change by enhancing processes, tooling, ways of working, controls and reporting so those teams can deliver faster safely.

The successful candidate will be responsible for raising standards across developer platforms (developer portal, CI/CD, cloud enablement), standardising ways of working, implementing systematic guardrails and consistent delivery reporting, and driving measurable improvements in delivery performance and developer productivity.

What does the role involve?

• Developer Platforms & Tooling: Own and evolve AJ Bell’s internal developer platform (Backstage) and supporting toolchain so product teams can self-serve for common needs (templates, shared libraries, CI/CD, pipelines, cloud patterns).
• Tool & Innovation Adoption: Drive adoption of modern productivity tools (for example, Git Hub Copilot / GenAI integrations and Platform Engineering toolings) where they demonstrably improve speed, quality or developer experience.
• Embed controls into the developer toolchain: implement automated quality gates, self-service approval workflows and policy-as-code patterns so compliance is consistent, auditable and minimally intrusive.
• Agile Delivery: Work with and influence existing product-aligned change functions to standardise squad structure, ways of working and “definition of done” across the organisation.
• Standardised Reporting & Metrics: Define and standardise delivery metrics and reporting cadence so product teams report consistently (including leading indicators for change risk and capacity). Use delivery metrics and developer-productivity frameworks to identify bottlenecks and measure improvement.
• Stakeholder Management: Act as the senior advocate for developer experience across AJ Bell. Collaborate with other teamsto ensure alignment between platform work, delivery processes and required controls.

What skills and experience you’ll bring

• Proven experience leading platform, Dev Ops, developer-experience, and/or changefunctions at scale, with a track record of improving delivery speed and quality through tooling, processes and culture.
• Hands on experience implementing developer tooling and platforms (developer portals such as Backstage, CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure and common Dev Ops automation patterns).
• Proven experience defining SDLC policy and engaging with audit/regulators; able to translate controls into automated tooling and evidence that satisfies risk and compliance reviewers.
• Strong experience standardising agile ways of working across multiple product teams and implementing pragmatic governance/guardrails that balance speed with control.
• Data-driven mindset: experienced in selecting and using delivery and productivity metrics to identify bottlenecks and demonstrate measurable improvement.
• Excellent stakeholder management, with the ability to influence product-aligned change teams (who retain operational ownership) and senior leaders to adopt common standards and tooling.
• A collaborative leadership style: proven ability to mentor leaders (Platform Engineering Manager and Agile Practices & Delivery Lead) and to foster a “platform as product” mindset where internal developer teams are treated as customers.

About us

AJ Bell is one of the fastest-growing investment platform businesses in the UK offering an award-winning range of solutions that caters for everyone, from professional financial advisers to DIY investors with little to no experience. We have over 644,000 customers using our award-winning platform propositions to manage assets totalling more than £103.3 billion. Our customers trust us with their investments, and by continuously striving to make investing easier, we aim to help even more people take control of their financial futures.

Having listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in December…