Director - Digital Engineering

  • Aegon
  • Edinburgh, UK
  • Sep 30, 2024
Full Time Executive Information Technology

Job Description

Job Description Summary

Job Description

Director - Digital Engineering

Permanent

Location: Edinburgh, Witham, or Peterborough (typically 2 days in the office per week, 3 from home)

Expected starting salary: £82,800 - £100,000

Closing date: 14th October 2024

Who we are:

Global Technology Services (GTS) is Aegon's global IT partner that provides infrastructure services, information security and global/corporate application support for Aegon's businesses around the world.

From 6 locations in the US, the Netherlands, UK, and Hungary, we support 20+ country units and 24000+ employees in the world. Our support consists of a wide range of centralized global IT services such as programming, database management, project management, agile/dev/ops, and more. We continue to maximize the value from having a clear digital and data technology platform strategy that extends our ecosystem, as an approach to digitization, enhancing customer experience, and improving operational efficiency. All these teams work closely together to provide innovative and digital solutions as well as critical technology support. This is essential for enabling Aegon's businesses around the globe to be innovative, digital, and competitive, efficient, and effective, and to provide the best solutions and customer experience for our customers and shareholders.

The Job:

This role will be part of the Global Engineering & Architecture function within the Global Technology Services group. The Global Engineering & Architecture function is responsible for Architecture, Standards, and Governance across the organization.

In this exciting new role for the company, you’ll be leading a development team with a strategic focus on building common solutions that can be leveraged across the entire organization. Your team’s mission will be to create innovative and adaptable software solutions that enhance productivity, streamline processes, and drive competitive advantage.

Here are some key aspects of your role:

  • As the director, you’ll set the vision for your team. You’ll inspire and guide them toward creating solutions that align with the organization’s goals. Your leadership will be crucial in fostering collaboration, creativity, and a growth mindset.

  • Given your initial focus on Generative AI, you’ll explore cutting-edge techniques and tools to infuse AI capabilities into your solutions. This could involve natural language processing, computer vision, or other AI-driven approaches.

  • You’ll bridge developers, project managers, and stakeholders to ensure everyone is aligned. Effective communication and collaboration will be essential to keep the team motivated and productive.

  • You’ll actively ensure that the organization’s System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is followed rigorously. This means overseeing requirements gathering, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance.

  • Adopting agile methodologies will allow your team to iterate quickly, respond to changing requirements, and deliver value incrementally. Scrum, Kanban, or a hybrid approach can help streamline development processes.

  • Work closely with other teams (such as data science, design, and product management) to ensure holistic solutions. Cross-functional collaboration fosters innovation and prevents silos.

  • Leverage modern tech stacks, cloud services, and DevOps practices. Integrating tools effectively will enhance development speed and quality.

  • Expect obstacles, whether technical, organizational, or cultural. Your role involves problem-solving, adaptability, and resilience.

  • Take charge of the team’s backlog. Prioritize features, epics, and user stories based on business value, technical feasibility, and customer needs. Your decisions will shape the product roadmap.

  • Create an internal community around a federated development model. Encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and best practices. This model accelerates feature development across platforms.

  • Lead by example. Dive into development tasks alongside your team. Your hands-on approach fosters camaraderie, inspires quality work, and keeps you connected to the codebase.

We’d love to hear from you if you have:

  • Experience delivering AWS cloud solutions (PaaS, IaaS, SaaS), data platforms, and engineering capability in a regulated environment.

  • Proficiency in Python programming.

  • Expertise in Generative AI architecture, including the use of vector stores, embedding models, and transformer-based architectures.

  • Familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) techniques, such as tokenization, named entity recognition (NER), and sentiment analysis.

  • Experience with machine learning frameworks and libraries, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn.

  • Knowledge of deploying and scaling AI models in production environments, including monitoring and maintaining model performance.

  • Delivery mechanisms including both iterative and waterfall across multi-disciplinary teams.

  • Previous experience transforming and leading ways of working in a regulated environment and effectively using JIRA, Confluence, and Teams as productivity and collaboration tools.

  • The ability to build a culture of innovation and foster a strong team culture.

  • The ability to work across internal and external teams.

  • Experience managing a diverse team of direct reports, working in a matrix management. environment, and leading cross-functional teams.

  • Proven experience in technology leadership and budget management.

What’s in it for you?

  • A non-contributory pension between 8%-12%

  • A discretionary bonus, depending on personal and company performance

  • 34 days leave per year (including bank holidays, pro-rated for part-time)

We also offer private medical cover, life assurance, critical illness cover, enhanced parental leave and a variety of lifestyle benefits to help our staff live their best lives, including retail discount vouchers, cycle2work scheme, subsidised restaurant, and online GP appointments.

The legal bits

We’ll need you to confirm you have the right to work in the UK. If we offer you a job and you accept, there are some checks we need to complete before you can start with us. This will include a credit and criminal record check, as well as providing satisfactory references.

Cifas Short Fair Processing Notice.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected, you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found by visiting www.cifas.org.uk/fpn.

Equal Opportunity Employer: 

We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their age, disability, race, religion/belief, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.