Financial Times - Engineering Lead – ERP Services

• Engineering & Platform Ownership • Owning the engineering, operation and continuous evolution of the ERP technology capability. • Providing clear technical direction for the platforms, integrations and supporting services owned by ERP Services. • Ensuring ERP platforms remain secure, resilient, scalable, maintainable and appropriately supported. • Establishing clear ownership across the team for systems, integrations and technical capabilities. • Ensuring engineering decisions consider reliability, security, operability, maintainability, cost and long-term sustainability. • Maintaining visibility of platform health, technical debt, lifecycle risks and significant dependencies. • Working with the Principal Engineer and Architecture on material technical decisions and longer-term platform direction. • Ensuring the team maintains sufficient technical understanding of its platforms to make informed decisions and challenge external recommendations. • People & Engineering Leadership • Leading, supporting and developing the engineers within ERP Services. • Setting clear expectations and providing regular coaching, feedback and career development. • Building a team culture based on ownership, accountability, collaboration and constructive technical challenge. • Developing ERP and enterprise platform expertise across the team rather than allowing critical knowledge to remain concentrated in individuals. • Identifying capability and skills gaps and developing plans to address them through development, recruitment or appropriate external expertise. • Creating opportunities for engineers to take greater technical ownership and develop their leadership capability. • Supporting recruitment and building a resilient team with the skills required for the future ERP technology landscape. • Ensuring appropriate succession and knowledge sharing across critical areas. • Delivery & Planning • Delivery & Planning • Working with Product to translate business priorities and technology strategy into clear engineering plans and deliverable outcomes. • Owning engineering planning and resource allocation within ERP Services. • Ensuring engineering capacity appropriately balances business change, platform improvement, operational work and technical debt. • Identifying technical dependencies, risks and constraints early and ensuring these are visible in planning and prioritisation. • Ensuring delivery commitments are realistic and supported by appropriate technical understanding. • Working across teams where initiatives involve multiple platforms, integrations or engineering capabilities. • Providing clear visibility of engineering progress, risks and trade-offs to Product, technology leadership and relevant stakeholders. • ERP Platform Evolution • Developing a clear understanding of the current ERP estate and identifying opportunities to simplify, modernise and improve it. • Working with Product, Architecture and the Principal Engineer to shape the longer-term evolution of ERP technology. • Evaluating platform capabilities and determining when requirements should be addressed through standard functionality, configuration, integration or other engineering approaches. • Challenging unnecessary customisation and complexity where more sustainable solutions are available. • Ensuring platform upgrades, new capabilities and significant changes are introduced safely and sustainably. • Understanding vendor roadmaps and assessing their implications for the FT's technology direction and investment decisions. • Ensuring technical debt and lifecycle concerns are actively managed rather than accumulating through incremental business change. • Integration & Enterprise Technology • Ensuring the team understands and owns the integrations and data flows connecting ERP with the wider FT technology estate. • Working closely with Integration & Engineering Services and other platform teams to establish clear ownership of cross-system capabilities. • Ensuring integrations follow appropriate FT engineering and architectural standards. • Identifying opportunities to simplify interfaces, reduce duplication and improve reliability. • Supporting technical decisions that span ERP, Tax, People and other Corporate Technology capabilities. • Ensuring changes within ERP appropriately consider downstream and upstream impacts. • Operational Excellence & Risk • Owning the operational performance of ERP Services and ensuring critical services are appropriately monitored and supported. • Establishing effective approaches to observability, incident management, problem management, change management and operational readiness. • Ensuring recurring incidents and operational problems are investigated to their underlying causes and addressed sustainably. • Maintaining appropriate approaches to resilience, disaster recovery and business continuity. • Ensuring relevant security, data governance, compliance and technology standards are met. • Maintaining visibility of material operational and technical risks and ensuring appropriate mitigation plans are in place. • Using operational insight to inform engineering priorities and platform investment. • Vendors & Technology Partners • Managing the technical relationship with ERP vendors, implementation partners and specialist service providers. • Ensuring external partners are used effectively while maintaining clear internal engineering ownership. • Providing informed technical challenge to vendor recommendations and proposed solutions. • Ensuring externally delivered work meets FT engineering, security and operational expectations. • Building internal knowledge from vendor and partner engagements rather than allowing expertise to remain externally concentrated. • Contributing technical input to vendor performance, technology selection and investment decisions. • Stakeholder & Cross-Team Collaboration • Building strong working relationships with Product, Finance and other business stakeholders. • Translating business requirements and priorities into clear engineering implications, options and trade-offs. • Helping stakeholders understand platform constraints, technical risks and investment requirements. • Partnering with the Principal Engineer, Architecture, Security and other engineering leaders on decisions that cross platform or organisational boundaries. • Working constructively with specialist engineers, including Tax and Compliance engineering, on shared capabilities and dependencies. • Representing ERP Services in relevant engineering and technology forums. • Technical and leadership experience we’re looking for • Strong experience with ERP platforms or similarly complex enterprise SaaS ecosystems. • Experience with Oracle Fusion or comparable enterprise ERP platforms would be highly advantageous. • Experience providing both people leadership and technical leadership to engineering teams. • Strong understanding of enterprise platform engineering, including integrations, APIs, data flows and system dependencies. • Experience owning technology through its full lifecycle, from change and delivery through to production operation and continuous improvement. • Experience developing engineering capability and strengthening technical ownership within teams. • Experience working with Finance or other complex enterprise business domains. • Strong understanding of reliability, security, observability, operational risk and technology lifecycle management. • Experience translating business priorities into engineering plans and balancing feature delivery with platform health and technical investment. • Experience leading technical decisions involving enterprise SaaS platforms, integrations and supporting services. • Experience working with vendors, implementation partners and managed service providers while maintaining internal technical ownership. • Experience identifying and addressing technical debt, platform lifecycle concerns and key-person dependencies. • Ability to communicate complex technical considerations and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. • Experience working effectively with Principal Engineers, architects, Product Managers and other engineering leaders. • Experience of major ERP transformation, implementation or modernisation would be advantageous. • Characteristics we value • Strong engineering judgement and a willingness to remain close to the technology. • A strong sense of ownership and accountability for both the team and the platforms it operates. • The ability to develop people while setting clear expectations for engineering quality and delivery. • Pragmatism when balancing business priorities, technical quality and operational risk. • Curiosity and a willingness to develop deep understanding of complex enterprise technology. • Confidence challenging vendors, stakeholders and technical colleagues constructively. • An instinct for building capability and distributing knowledge rather than becoming the person who owns every technical answer. • A collaborative approach to working across Product, business and technology teams. • A focus on addressing underlying problems rather than repeatedly managing symptoms. • An appreciation for simplicity, resilience and long-term platform sustainability.