Head of Engineering (WasteInsight)

At Retail Insight, our Engineering organisation is fundamental to how we build, implement, and continuously improve our products. Our squads own their products end‑to‑end, integrating with new clients, delivering professional services, and creating bespoke solutions for key accounts.

We’re now looking for a Head of Engineering to champion our engineering teams focused on our WasteInsight product, ensuring they are supported, empowered, and set up to deliver high‑quality work at pace.

This senior role requires deep technical expertise, strong leadership, and a passion for developing people and processes. You will shape how we deliver change—improving ways of working, establishing clear governance, defining meaningful metrics, and ensuring transparent reporting. You’ll be a visible leader with a coaching mindset, able to identify opportunities to improve, articulate the case for change, and deliver meaningful improvements across teams, systems, tooling, and processes.

You will lead one or more cross‑functional squads of data engineers, software engineers and QA engineers, collaborating closely with technical leads and product owners to ensure delivery excellence. As the role evolves, you will also influence wider business planning, pre‑sales (Demand Management), and Portfolio Delivery.

Key Responsibilities;

Leadership & Delivery

Lead multiple multi‑disciplinary agile squads.

Manage through layers, delegate effectively, and create a unified purpose across teams.

Ensure continuous improvement in processes, technical capability, value delivery, quality, and flow.

Define departmental goals aligned to business outcomes.

Foster a positive, high‑performing team culture.

Planning, Prioritisation & Governance

Work with stakeholders to confirm feasibility and timelines for delivery.

Identify and resolve resourcing bottlenecks.

Provide clear reporting, visibility, and foresight on progress and risks.

Act as a key decision‑maker for squad priorities and input into the product roadmap.

Define how technology and product roadmaps integrate and influence both.

Technical Oversight

Maintain deep understanding of products from technical, customer, and business perspectives.

Translate technical challenges into business impact—and business objectives into technical requirements.

Ensure Non‑Functional Requirements (NFRs) are appropriately prioritised.

Represent Engineering in Service Management and prioritisation forums.

Act as Incident Manager when required and drive root‑cause investigations to long‑term resolution.

People Development

Coach, mentor, and develop engineering talent to unlock technical potential.

Create opportunities for growth and support capability uplift across teams.

Lead hiring processes and be accountable for final hiring decisions.

Communicate clearly with stakeholders of all seniority and present confidently to different audiences.

Decision Making & Continuous Improvement

Use internal and external data to identify trends and inform decisions.

Work collaboratively across Engineering, Decision Science, Sales, Delivery, Operations, Product, and Analytics.

Encourage active listening, problem solving, and structured decision‑making across teams.

Our ideal candidate;

Significant experience leading software or data engineering teams.

Strong track record of decision‑making in fast‑paced environments.

Retail or grocery background advantageous (especially store operations knowledge).

Strong communicator able to engage stakeholders at all levels.

Skilled in conflict resolution, negotiation, and influence.

Coaching‑first leadership style—prioritises enabling others over doing the work directly.

Curious, tenacious, and constantly seeking opportunities to improve.

Able to translate between technical and business perspectives with ease.

Effective listener who encourages teams to explore options and find the right solutions.

Strong asynchronous communicator and problem solver.