Engineering Manager

Job Purpose

We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead one of our engineering teams within Protect. 

Protect serves some of the world’s largest patent filers, helping them manage the full intellectual property lifecycle, from filing and translation through to renewals, recordals, and portfolio management. We are in the middle of a significant platform evolution: moving from a services-led model to a modern SaaS product suite and open collaboration platform, with AI-enabled capabilities woven throughout. 

 

The way software gets built is changing fast. AI-assisted development, agentic tooling, and new engineering workflows are reshaping what a small, skilled team can achieve. We are looking for someone who is not just aware of this shift but is actively driving it in their own work. You should be using AI development tools daily, forming opinions about what works, and pushing the boundaries of how engineering teams operate with these capabilities. This role is as much about harnessing that change as it is about traditional engineering leadership. 

 

You will be spinning up a new team with modern ways of working, modern tooling, and a clear DevSecOps mindset. The team will build new systems while also maintaining, upgrading, and retiring legacy ones. You should be comfortable with a “you build it, you run it” culture where engineers own their services end to end, from design through to production operations. 

 

You will work closely with product, design, and business stakeholders to ensure engineering is well aligned with commercial and strategic goals.

 

About Product & Technology

 

Product & Technology plays a pivotal role in aligning the organization with its strategic objectives and enhancing shareholder value. Product & Technology is responsible for establishing unified standards and governance practices throughout the company. Additionally, we oversee the development and maintenance of core applications essential for the seamless operation of various functions across the organization. We are committed to driving and executing future roadmaps that are in line with the overall strategic direction of RWS. 

 

With a global reach, Product & Technology provides support services to over 7500 end users worldwide. We take pride in managing the information security operation and safeguarding all our assets. Our core functions encompass Enterprise & Technical Architecture, Network & Voice, Infrastructure, Service Delivery, Service Operations, Data & Analytics, Security & Quality Compliance, Transformation, Application Development, Enterprise Platforms, With a dedicated team of over 500 staff, Product & Technology ensures a strong presence across all regions, enabling efficient and effective support to our global operations.

Job Overview

Key Responsibilities

• Leading and growing a new Protect engineering team, establishing ways of working, tooling, and culture from the ground up
• Remaining hands-on: contributing to architecture decisions, design reviews, and code where it adds the most value
• Driving adoption of AI development tools and agentic workflows across the team, and staying at the leading edge of how these tools change engineering practice
• Setting technical direction for the platform in collaboration with your team, balancing modernisation ambitions with pragmatic delivery
• Owning engineering delivery for your team, including planning, prioritisation, and execution
• Embedding a DevSecOps culture with full production ownership, where engineers are responsible for the security, reliability, and operation of what they build
• Building strong partnerships with product managers, designers, domain experts, and senior business stakeholders
• Establishing engineering practices: CI/CD, automated testing, observability, security scanning, and deployment workflows
• Creating an environment where engineers can do their best work, with clear expectations, regular feedback, and genuine development opportunities
• Helping the team navigate domain complexity, including patent lifecycle workflows and IP data structures, and building enough context to make sound technical decisions
• Representing Protect engineering within the wider engineering organisation, contributing to cross-cutting initiatives and standards 

Skills & Experience

 

We do not expect candidates to match every item below. We value leadership quality, technical credibility, and the ability to build high-performing teams. 

You will likely have experience in many of the following areas: 

• Significant experience in software engineering, with a progression into engineering management
• A strong technical background, with the ability and willingness to stay close to the code and architecture
• Comfort working across multiple technology stacks (e.g. TypeScript, Java, .NET) rather than being tied to one
• Hands-on experience with AI development tools and a genuine interest in how agentic tooling is changing software engineering
• Experience with AWS and cloud-native architectures
• Strong understanding of containers and modern deployment practices
• A DevSecOps mindset with experience embedding security, observability, and operational ownership into engineering culture
• Track record of delivering complex software products or platforms
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with day-to-day execution
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate between technical and business contexts
• Experience building engineering culture: hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and developing engineers 

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