Financial Times - Senior Engineer -Commercial Technology

• Technical Direction & Architecture • Own the technical direction for the Marketing & Commercial Data capability, ensuring technology decisions align with the wider Commercial Technology strategy and FT engineering standards. • Lead architectural thinking and significant technical decisions across the capability, balancing immediate delivery needs with security, resilience, scalability, maintainability and long-term sustainability. • Establish and champion appropriate engineering standards, patterns and practices across the team. • Maintain visibility of architecture, technical debt, lifecycle risks, dependencies and emerging technology opportunities. • Work with the Principal Engineer, Principal Architect and other Technical Leads on decisions that span multiple capabilities, platforms or technology domains. • Identify opportunities to simplify, modernise and improve the technology landscape while avoiding unnecessary complexity and duplication. • Engineering Quality & Technical Leadership • Provide hands-on technical leadership and guidance to engineers while creating appropriate autonomy for individuals to make decisions and take ownership of the technology they work with. • Mentor engineers and technical specialists, helping them develop their technical expertise, engineering judgement and confidence in making technical decisions. • Support engineers through complex technical challenges without becoming the decision-maker or implementation owner for every issue. • Promote strong engineering practices including testing, automation, observability, security, documentation and sustainable software development. • Encourage constructive technical challenge, knowledge sharing and continuous learning across the team. • Work with the Engineering Manager to identify technical skills and capability gaps and help develop the engineering capabilities required for our future platform. • Delivery & Collaboration • Partner closely with the Engineering Manager – Marketing & Commercial Data to ensure technical strategy, people, delivery and operational priorities remain aligned. • Engineering Manager – Marketing & Commercial Data • Provide technical input into roadmaps, planning and prioritisation, ensuring delivery plans are technically achievable and account for complexity, dependencies, technical risk and longer-term investment. • Work with Product, Programme and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into appropriate technical approaches and clearly communicate technical considerations, trade-offs and opportunities. • Identify technical risks and dependencies early and work with the Engineering Manager and wider Commercial Technology leadership to ensure they are understood and appropriately managed. • Work closely with Technical Leads, Engineering Managers and engineers across Commercial Technology to coordinate technical decisions and shared dependencies. • Work effectively with external technology partners and delivery vendors, providing technical direction and ensuring solutions align with FT architecture, engineering standards and practices. • Operational Excellence & Technical Health • Be accountable for the technical health and sustainability of the Marketing & Commercial Data capabilities throughout their lifecycle. • Ensure solutions are designed and engineered with appropriate consideration for security, resilience, scalability, observability, maintainability and supportability. • Work with the Engineering Manager and Commercial Platform team to ensure new and changed capabilities are operationally ready and can be effectively supported within the wider Commercial Technology operating model. • Provide technical leadership during incidents affecting Marketing & Commercial Data capabilities, supporting diagnosis, technical decision-making and sustainable resolution. • Ensure technical debt, lifecycle risks and engineering improvements are visible, understood and appropriately considered alongside product and programme priorities. • Ensure learning from incidents and operational issues informs architecture, engineering standards and future technical decisions. • Change & Platform Evolution • Provide technical leadership for the evolution of the FT’s Marketing & Commercial Data technology landscape. • Shape the technical transition from established marketing platforms, including Bloomreach and Marketo, towards the FT’s strategic Salesforce-based marketing and data capabilities. • Define and evolve the architecture, engineering patterns and technical practices required to support the future Marketing & Commercial Data platform. • Work with the Engineering Manager to ensure the team develops the technical skills and knowledge required to own and evolve the future platform sustainably. • Work with Commercial Platform, other Technical Leads, the Principal Architect and the Principal Engineer to ensure platform changes integrate coherently with the wider Commercial Technology ecosystem and maintain operational continuity. • Our Technology • Our Commercial Technology landscape is evolving. Technologies and platforms within or interacting with Marketing & Commercial Data include: • Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next (Advanced Edition) • Salesforce Data 360 • Salesforce Sales & Service Cloud • Sales Collaboration & Enablement Tooling • JavaScript / TypeScript • APIs and integration technologies • AWS Technologies • Data platforms and integrations • CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling • Monitoring and observability tooling • Jira & Confluence • You do not need experience with all of these technologies to apply. We are particularly interested in technical leaders who can work across complex technology ecosystems, provide strong engineering judgement and help teams develop the skills required for an evolving platform. • Technical and Leadership experience we’re looking for • Experience managing, leading or designing a Customer Data Platform, ideally utilising Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next and Data 360. • Experience providing technical leadership across engineering teams or significant technology capabilities. • Strong architectural and engineering judgement, with experience making and guiding significant technical decisions. • Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices and the design of secure, resilient, scalable and maintainable systems. • Experience identifying and managing technical debt, architectural risk, technology lifecycle concerns and cross-system dependencies. • Experience working closely with engineers to solve complex technical problems while enabling others to take ownership and develop their expertise. • Experience balancing immediate delivery needs with longer-term architecture, engineering quality and technical investment. • Strong understanding of operational excellence, observability, reliability and production engineering. • Experience working effectively with Product, Engineering, Data, Programme and business stakeholders. • Ability to communicate complex technical considerations and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. • Experience working across teams and influencing technical decisions beyond your immediate area. • Experience leading technical change across significant platform or technology transformations would be beneficial. • Experience with Salesforce, marketing technology, customer data platforms, enterprise SaaS ecosystems or complex integration architectures would be beneficial, but is not essential • Characteristics we value • Strong technical judgement and curiosity. • A strong sense of ownership and accountability for technical outcomes. • Pragmatism when balancing technical quality, delivery needs and operational risk. • An ability to make complex technical concepts understandable. • Confidence challenging technical approaches constructively. • An instinct for enabling and mentoring engineers rather than becoming the person through whom every technical decision must pass. • An appreciation for simplicity, reliability and long-term technical sustainability. • A collaborative approach to working across Engineering, Product, Data and business teams. • Calm and clear technical leadership during incidents and periods of change. • Curiosity and a willingness to continuously learn. • An interest in how technology and data can enable better customer experiences and commercial outcomes.