Head of Systems Engineering

The Opportunity

Reporting to the CIDO, the Head of Systems Engineering is responsible for leading the development and implementation of the engineering strategy across all scrum teams. To manage and develop a resilient and high-performing team of systems engineers who are capable of understanding and delivering on the technology vision and strategy within their own function. 

In addition to team leadership, this role is also expected to be a subject matter expert in their respective leadership discipline, the person who can remove blockers, solve problems and make decisions for their teams while also defining and executing the strategy for their own discipline.

The role also has accountability to deputise for their line manager (whenever necessary) and is expected to support the IT&D leadership team while also driving a positive culture (primarily through role modelling) across the information technology & digital department and wider business.

What You'll Do

• Own, define and execute the SME strategy ensuring it satisfies the needs of the organisation as well as the individuals within the team for their own discipline including future roadmaps, innovation and R&D.
• To lead, coach, develop and build a resilient and high-performing team who are capable of understanding and delivering on the technology vision and strategy, contribute to a culture of continuous improvement and take ownership of their career progression.
Owns the definition and realisation of team objectives that are aligned to individual, technology and NGED priorities.
• Owns the accountability for working with and influencing relevant senior stakeholders across the business, ensuring the appropriate level of stakeholder engagement capability also exists within their own teams.
• Owns and manages any and/or all delegated financial/budgetary accountabilities related to the team.
• Accountable for the Identification, structure and management of training needs for the entire team, ensuring evidence-based performance improvement and individual competency growth.
• Own the relationship with third-parties working on technology projects, ensuring third-party deliveries are formally scoped, and delivery is within budget and to agreed milestones and quality expectations.
• Owns shared accountability with the technology leadership team for delivered solutions ensuring commercial viability; operational principles and standards compliance; adherence to the architectural strategy and high-level solution designs; and solution delivery which is; supportable, enduring and minimises future development costs.
• Support Agile delivery principles across technology ensuring best practice adoption.
• Leads the delegated department business and technology strategy and implements the roadmap.
• Owns team resourcing across all projects for in-house / third parties ensuring key skills and intellectual property are retained.
• Champion the agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban and SAFe) within the team, ensure that Agile principles are practiced by peers and understood by stakeholders.
• Accountable for delivered solutions ensuring commercial viability; operational principles and standards compliance; adherence to the architectural strategy and high-level solution designs; and solution delivery which is; supportable, enduring and minimises future development costs.

Key Accountabilities

• Act as an Agile leader, living the principles of agile development, whilst being a role model for our technical and cultural values.
• Playing an active role in supporting the agile software development life cycle; collaborating with all technical/engineering functions, to define, document, implement and share best practice and standards.
• Promote and proactively support a culture of robust (project and departmental) risk assessment/mitigation and ensure all activity is compliant and delivered within delivery governance frameworks and operating principles.
• Lead and guide the team to setup and optimise operational processes that satisfy the Agile strategy.
• Deputise for the CIDO, when delegated, in meetings and decision making.
• Undertakes other duties from time to time as required by the CIDO.
• Lead systems engineering across all projects within technology (including software reviews, tools & solution design and maintenance and infrastructure design and operation).
• Manages technology architectures across systems engineering functions and drive capability and competency across all teams.
• Execute systems engineering approach and technology strategy roadmap to create solution designs and application architectures.
• Drive Agile systems engineering approach and best practice principles across the teams.
• Accountable for systems engineering strategy in accordance with architectural & performance principles set out and agreed within Technology, Cyber Security and Risk.
• Accountable for any and all activity ensuring conformance to, at a minimum, industry best practise and our minimum standards for; Security, Performance and Data Protection.
• Ensure all systems engineering activity is compliant and delivered within the project governance frameworks.
• Ensure that any knowledge related to supported systems/platforms is documented and shared across the team (no single point of failure).

About You

• Strong decision-making ability.
• Exceptional communicator with outstanding interpersonal skills and stakeholder management experience.
• Strong influencing skills and ability to communicate technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences, clearly and concisely.
• Excels at working with people and developing teams (coaching, training, facilitating and collaborating).
• Detailed knowledge/experience of the NGED product suite.
• Able to work under pressure and adapt to shifting priorities, demands and timelines and quickly update stakeholders on impact (potential or actual) to the defined delivery timecales.
• High self-awareness and emotional intelligence, able to recognise the impact of their own behavior on others.
• Eagerness to continually develop self through high quality training and the latest industry trends with regular, guided self-reflection and “mentoring”.
• Knowledge and experience of implementing and leading a systems engineering strategy, SDLC strategy, and working with cloud technologies (AWS, Azure and GCP).
• Strong commercial awareness and prioritisation skills with product management experience.
• Act as a SME leader and role model within the delivery community and wider NGED organisation.
• Knowledge and expertise of agile engineering concepts, standards and methodologies, combined with practical experience of determining the best approach/implementation (hosting infrastructure, networking, security, engineering tools, analytics etc.).
• Agile system engineering experience (competent and capable).
• Demonstrable experience of change delivery across a range of devices and supporting Digital experiences across web, mobile and apps.
• Ability to mentor and coach systems engineering professionals to increase engineering capability and expertise within the delivery function.
• The ability to understand complex functionality and architectures and define the best tools and approach.
• Relevant Bachelor's or Master's degree or technology certifications.
 

What You'll Get

Along with a competitive base salary, you will get access to some great perk - like a company car or allowance, a bonus of up to 20% of your salary for stretch performance and a competitive contributory pension scheme where we will double match your contribution to a maximum company contribution of 12%. You will also have access to a number of flexible benefits such as a share incentive plan, a salary sacrifice technology scheme, support via the employee assistance line and matched charity giving to name a few. Just a few ways we invest in you! 
 

More Information

This posting will close 16 May 2025.

DEI Commitment
At National Grid, we work towards the highest standards in everything we do, including how we support, value and develop our people. Our aim is to encourage and support employees to thrive and be the best they can be. We celebrate the difference people can bring into our organisation, and welcome and encourage applicants with diverse experiences and backgrounds, and offer flexible and tailored support, at home and in the office.

Our goal is to drive, develop and operate our business in a way that results in a more inclusive culture. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, the innovation from diverse teams & perspectives and business need. We are committed to building a workforce so we can represent the communities we serve and have a working environment in which each individual feels valued, respected, fairly treated, and able to reach their full potential.