Head of Engineering

Job Description Summary :

This is role is an incredible opportunity for a Head of Engineering seeking a fresh new career opportunity where you will be responsible for leading Inviqa’s in-house engineering team of approximately 25 software engineers. We’re looking for someone who’s still passionate about being hands on and constantly testing out new innovations. We want our clients excited about having you directly involved in a hands-on manner on their projects, enabling you to have 50% of your time billable on client work and the other 50% focused on engineering leadership.

Job Description :

This is a critical role that will enable Inviqa to deliver on our technical strategy, inspire our software engineering team and ensure we continue to evolve our engineering skills to deliver future fit products and services for our clients.

You will work within a highly distributed, remote first engineering team who are located across the UK, Germany, Hungary and India and you will report directly into our CTO. We offer a flexible working arrangement. There will be travel required from time to time to our London headquarters and due to the nature of this job, you may have to visit engineering teams throughout the UK (Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow) and abroad (Germany, Hungary and India) to build strong relationships.

Your Key Areas of Responsibilities

The hands-on and billable aspects of your role:

• Client Workshops and Presentations:
  • Leading workshops to understand client needs and translate them into technical requirements.
  • Presenting technical solutions and strategies to client stakeholders.
• Technical consultation:
  • Offering expert advice on system architecture, design, and technology stacks.
  • Reviewing and recommending improvements for client projects.
• Prototyping and Proof of Concepts (POCs):
  • Developing prototypes or POCs to validate ideas and demonstrate feasibility to clients.
• Technical Audits and Assessments:
  • Performing comprehensive audits of existing systems.
  • Providing detailed reports with recommendations for improvements.

The engineering leadership aspects of your role:

• In partnership with the Senior Leadership Team, and particularly our CTO, you will ensure our engineering teams adopt programming languages and frameworks that align with our technical strategy to deliver world class work for our clients.
• You will build and maintain a strong engineering culture of innovation and collaboration by driving the success and effectiveness of communities of practice, hackathons and encouraging Inviqans to value a strong knowledge sharing culture.
• You will hire, mentor, and retain top engineering talent, fostering their professional growth and development.
• You will often be asked to oversee the timings and estimation of new projects.
• You will actively participate in new business pitching, which may involve responding to tenders and requests for information, representing our tech capability in pitch presentations, and similar activities.
• You will regularly review and identify gaps in tech capability and work with the CTO and senior leadership team to ensure the engineering team has a clear path to mastery of relevant, new skills.
• Establish and enforce best practices, standards, and processes for software development through the creation and maintenance of a comprehensive software development life cycle process.
• Communicate effectively and transparently the engineering vision, strategy, and progress to the senior leadership team at regular intervals.
• Champion Inviqa’s engineering capabilities throughout HAVAS Villages to raise awareness and identify service delivery opportunities.

The Technical Skills You Should Have:

Inviqa’s software engineering stack is focused on the following specialist areas, which you should have demonstrable experience with. Expertise in everything is not required, however an ability to champion, grow and evolve our modern engineering stack is a must:

• ReactJS, NextJS, Remix
• Node (Express), Python (Django and Flask)
• AWS & Azure Administration

Your skills:

• You will be a vocal advocate for the adoption of a modern, future fit tech stack that aligns to company goals and the tech strategy and preferred tech stack.
• You’ll bring at least 5 years in a senior engineering leadership role.
• You should have a proven track record of delivering successful projects, products and services in a fast-paced, agile environment, ideally with a proven track record in agencies like Inviqa.
• You can demonstrate experience in some of the specialist areas and vendor platforms Inviqa use, notably in eCommerce (Shopify), modern headless Content Management Systems (ContentStack) and Product Information Management (Akeneo). You don’t need to be an expert at all of them, but you should demonstrate an ability to learn and develop skills and knowledge where there are gaps.
• You have a strong technical background and expertise in software architecture, software engineering processes, and software development standards.
• You can demonstrably prove your experience in building composable solutions for client projects using best in breed vendor platforms and integrate them using MACH principles.
• You have excellent leadership, management, and communication skills, with the ability to inspire, motivate, and empower engineering teams.
• You’re a strategic and analytical thinker, with the ability to balance short-term and long-term objectives and trade-offs.
• You’ve experience with cloud computing (AWS and Azure), web development, and emerging technologies such as Generative AI.
• You have a personal passion for innovation, learning, and continuous improvement and you know how to make that rub off on other engineers.

About Inviqa:

Inviqa is a full-service digital agency that designs and builds exceptional digital experiences. We blend strategy, insight, design, and engineering — underpinned by best-in-class technology and agile methodologies. We have a team of around 100 designers, software engineers, project managers and client services folk, based in both the UK and Germany.

We are immensely proud of the long-lasting client relationships we build – for clients such as Arsenal, who have been a client for the past 9 years, to working with Starbucks across 28 EMEA markets. Most recently we have engaged with a prominent global children’s toy and collectibles brand to deliver their global direct to consumer ecommerce store on a leading MACH alliance commerce platform.

We are part of the Havas CX network which means we have access to XD and engineering teams across the globe and can bring in experts in business consultancy or customer engagement depending on a client’s needs. Our London office is based in the Havas Kings Cross Village where you can collaborate and learn from over 26 different marketing disciplines from advertising to media to PR and social. We operate a remote and hybrid working approach, giving our people the flexibility to find a good work-life balance whilst still being connected to customers and colleagues.

As an agency we put people first, building brilliant things for other people. Empathy underpins everything we do, and we do our best work when we work together, taking pride in creating high quality solutions. We value openness and curiosity, which is why we never stop learning – we dedicate time and budget to supporting everyone in this goal.

Contract Type :
Permanent

Equal Opportunities:
Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.