Product Engineering Manager

Must have:

• Experience leading a team to deliver large projects on time and on budget. 
• Strong foundation as a Software Engineer in a commercial product development setting.
• Confident manager with a good coaching, mentoring and feedback ethos who can build high performing teams, and manage internal and external relationships. 
• Strong leadership, mentoring and interpersonal skills, with the ability to lead and motivate a team towards common goals.  
• Critical thinking and analytical skills 
• Clear communicator who can inspire others through a multitude of mediums, be enthusiastic, provide context and then deliver on it through the team. 
• Experience of managing teams of software engineers of all levels working on multiple projects - including complex problem solving, resource planning, adapting quickly to change, raising risk and mitigations, working with conviction, and working to tight deadlines. 
• Resilient, calm, and methodical in high pressure situations and able to multi-task, prioritise and make decisions. 
• Experience of performance management, including making difficult decisions and having difficult conversations.  
• Passion for people-first leadership, and commitment to fostering a positive, inclusive and high-performing team culture.  
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic and constantly evolving environment.  
• Excellent first-hand knowledge of software development techniques and methodologies throughout the SDLC. 
• Able to multitask, prioritise work in sometimes pressurised situations. 
• Strong experience in managing and mentoring teams of Software Engineers in a fast-paced environment. 
• Experience in client facing situations. 
• Ability to manage and lead on multiple projects in various stages simultaneously.  
• Proven track record of successfully recruiting diverse candidates at all levels balanced with technical and soft skills.  

mkodo is seeking a driven Product Engineering Manager to support the ambitious growth of our GeoLocs product. Reporting to the Head of Engineering, this role leads a high-performing team of Software Engineers, Tech Leads, and Principal Engineers, working with technologies including Java, AWS, Kafka, SQL Databases, Swift, Kotlin, and React. The Engineering Manager works in close partnership with the GeoLocs Product Manager, fellow Engineering Managers, QA Lead, and Client Delivery Leads.

The Product Engineering Manager leads the delivery of mkodo’s GeoLocs product line, ensuring the design, development, and operation of SDKs, APIs, and services that provide regulated geolocation capabilities for clients across multiple markets. They own the technical execution of the GeoLocs roadmap in partnership with the Product Manager, balancing speed, quality, and product impact to deliver measurable value to mkodo and its clients.

This role will form part of a pair of Engineering Managers jointly responsible for the successful delivery of GeoLocs development and features. The two Engineering Managers will work closely together to provide leadership, alignment, and strategic direction across the GeoLocs area, while each will directly manage one of the teams within the GeoLocs structure. This model ensures strong cross-team collaboration and shared ownership of delivery outcomes.

A central accountability of this role is to ensure projects are delivered on time and on budget, without compromising on quality or compliance. To achieve this, the Product Engineering Manager works closely with engineers to produce accurate effort estimations. These estimations are critical to prioritising features effectively, setting realistic internal expectations, and making reliable commitments to clients. By driving this discipline, the Product Engineering Manager ensures the team delivers predictably and consistently against mkodo’s goals.

This is not a hands-on development role, but it requires a strong technical background and prior experience as a Software Engineer in a product development environment. The Product Engineering Manager influences both the success of their team and the wider engineering organisation, drawing on a deep understanding of modern software delivery and management practices and a proven record of delivering complex products successfully.

The Product Engineering Manager is a people-first leader with an empathetic, principle-centred approach, promoting engineering excellence with an automation-first mindset. By challenging, guiding, and encouraging engineers, they foster an environment where individuals perform at their best. Acting as the hiring manager for the GeoLocs team, they partner with HR to lead engineering talent recruitment, maintaining a high bar for excellence and accountability.

This is a critical role within the company, ensuring the delivery of outstanding products and services to GeoLocs clients. The Product Engineering Manager is also accountable for performance management within the engineering community—rewarding high achievement while identifying and addressing areas for improvement.

• Accountable for their teams delivering projects on-time and on-budget, ensuring the team knows the milestone dates and the contribution they need to make to hit them.
• Identifying and removing issues and keeping the team moving towards hitting milestone dates.
• Providing leadership, direction, and performance management to a team of Software Engineers, fostering excellence in delivery.
• Ensuring the team is focused on high value work. 
• Communicate progress and achievements to all levels, including execs, and present clear and concise project updates.  
• Strive to improve efficiency and sustainability of processes, and to reduce waste.  
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement: Using retrospective data, project metrics, bug escape metrics and regular operational catch ups across the business, gather actionable data, track trends, and analyse data to demonstrate continuous improvement to process, approaches, and tooling across teams. 
• Working with the Head of Engineering, contribute to, and maintain, the strategy that will be rolled out and inspire your team to act on an energised vision of Software Engineering. 
• Lead and direct Principal and Lead Software Engineers, and Software Engineers of all levels, providing coaching and support to drive the capability of your Engineering team, ensuring appropriate training and continuous learning is in place to support growth and succession planning of individuals. 
• Role model the mkodo behaviours and values and hold others accountable for them.  
• Create and maintain a culture of resilience, trust and psychological safety on your team, empowering engineers to experiment and fail fast.  
• Provide technical guidance and direction to the engineering team, while promoting a culture of innovation and creativity.  
• Partner with HR to attract, retain and develop top talent, as well as manage performance and development of team members, both technically and behaviourally.  
• Support and manage career progression using a Career Ladder framework. 
• Ensure that processes meet necessary compliance guidelines (e., ISO27001 and PCI Compliance) and are being always followed by teams.  
• Identify areas of strategic technical debt, do the cost/benefit analysis for resolving this debt and communicate suggested timelines for prioritizing this to the management team. 
• Communicate technical information to non-technical stakeholders, including customers.  
• Partner with the other functional leads and managers across the organisation, developing a cross-functional team relationship that sets the bar for your direct reports. Ensuring you have full visibility of the conversations with Project Managers and Product Owners about roadmaps, the resource plans for your team and regularly check that workload and capacity are matched. 
• Support the Head of Engineering to manage effective resource model usage, with a mix of permanent UK mkodo people, and offshore/nearshore resources, in addition to using shared services within the PBL where applicable. 
• Develop your skills using training mkodo offers and be willing to ask questions when you are not sure or when something is in your way. 
• Support mkodo in the implementation and ongoing maintenance of its ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS).
• Adhere to all relevant mkodo ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS) policies, procedures and requirements at all times.
• Complete any reasonable tasks relating to the mkodo ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS).

mkodo is a great place to work, with excellent benefits comprising:

● Hybrid/Flexible Working
● Quarterly team events
● Birthday Holiday
● Christmas Day-Off
● Generous Holiday Allowance
● Tech Loan Scheme
● Performance bonus & profit share scheme
● Cycle to Work scheme
● Travel Loan scheme
● Supplies of fresh fruits, cereals, biscuits, nibbles, etc. in the offices
● Relevant training and training budget.
● Digital Nomad Policy
● Generous refer a friend scheme

mkodo builds world class apps and digital products in the global lottery, betting and gaming space.

We have an open, supportive, dynamic culture where talented people are trusted to contribute to the team and company by carrying out their roles in a professional, collaborative, and skilled manner. We value the expertise of our team members and offer opportunities for personal development and career progression within the company.