Head of Engineering, Developer Experience

ABOUT THE TEAM:

The Platform Engineering team builds the tools, infrastructure and ‘golden paths’ that let Tide’s engineers ship safely and quickly. We own everything from CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling to Tide’s service catalogue, including the Developer Productivity function, and our mission is to make the right way the easy way for every engineer at Tide — human or AI agent.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

As Head of Developer Experience, you will report directly to the Director of Platform Engineering and be responsible for how every engineer at Tide builds, tests and ships software. You will:

Own the Developer Experience strategy for Tide, setting the vision and roadmap for developer tooling, CI/CD and the internal platform.

Lead the design, build and continuous improvement of CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling, reducing friction and lead time across the software delivery lifecycle.

Define, track and report on DevEx and engineering productivity metrics (e.g. DORA, SPACE), using data to identify bottlenecks and prioritise investment.

Own and evolve Tide’s service catalogue (Backstage), establishing it as the single source of truth for the ICT Asset Register and driving adoption across engineering.

Manage the Developer Productivity function, responsible for building and maintaining Java/Spring and Python ‘paved road’ templates that give product teams a fast, secure and consistent way to start new services.

Own the internally developed libraries for authentication and other common functionality, ensuring they are well documented, kept up to date, and widely adopted across product teams.

Build, lead and mentor a team of platform, developer experience and developer productivity engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, craftsmanship and continuous improvement.

Prepare Tide’s engineering platform for agentic development, ensuring our tooling, paved roads and guardrails allow AI coding agents (e.g. Claude Code) to contribute safely and effectively alongside human engineers.

Define the platform, tooling and operating model for running AI-developed applications in production, covering observability, security, testing and governance for agent-authored code.

Partner closely with engineering leaders, security and compliance stakeholders across Tide’s product and platform teams to identify friction points and shape the platform roadmap.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

Tide is seeking an experienced Head of Developer Experience to lead our efforts in making our engineers as productive and effective as possible. The ideal candidate will have:

A proven track record leading Developer Experience, Platform Engineering or DevOps/SRE teams at scale.

Hands-on experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling in a modern cloud environment.

Experience with Backstage, or a comparable internal developer portal / service catalogue tool, including rollout and adoption.

Experience running a developer productivity or paved-road function, including building and maintaining project templates (e.g. Java/Spring, Python) and shared libraries (e.g. authentication, common functionality) used by product teams.

Working knowledge of engineering productivity frameworks such as DORA metrics or SPACE, and experience using them to drive improvement.

Familiarity with agentic and AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Claude Code, GitHub Copilot), and a point of view on the guardrails, governance and infrastructure needed to run AI-developed applications safely in production.

Strong people leadership skills, with a track record of building, growing and developing high-performing engineering teams.

Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, able to influence engineering leaders across multiple teams and locations.

Experience in financial services or another regulated, technology-driven scale-up environment is a plus.

OUR TECH STACK

Our platform and developer experience tooling includes: Terraform, Helm, Crossplane, Kubernetes (K8S), GitHub, AWS, GCP, Claude, and Backstage as our developer portal and service catalogue. Our product teams build on Java/Spring Boot and Python.

WHAT YOU’LL GET IN RETURN:

Competitive Compensation -  competitive salary and share options

Time Off – Generous annual leave on top of bank holidays.

Parental Leave – Paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave to support your family journey.

Sabbatical – Extended unpaid and paid leave options after completing milestone years with Tide.

Health Insurance – Private family insurance with additional OPD coverage and top-up options.

Life & Accident Cover – Comprehensive accidental and life insurance protection.

Mental Wellbeing – Access to therapy sessions, courses, meditations, and workshops.

Volunteering & Development Days – Paid days annually for volunteering or personal growth.

Learning & Development – Annual budget for books, courses, coaching, and more.

WOO (Work Outside the Office) – Work from abroad for up to 90 days annually.

Home Office Setup – Contribution towards setting up your home office

Laptop Ownership – Keep your old laptop and get a new one when it’s time for a replacement.

Snacks & Meals – Office perks with snacks, coffee, tea, and lunch (location dependent).

TIDEAN WAYS OF WORKING

At Tide, we champion a flexible workplace model that supports both in-person and remote work to cater to the specific needs of our different teams.

While remote work is supported, we believe in the power of face-to-face interactions to foster team spirit and collaboration. Our offices are designed as hubs for innovation and team-building, where we encourage regular in-person gatherings to foster a strong sense of community.