Company Description

We are champions of rail, inspired to build a greener, more sustainable future of travel. Our purpose is our momentum. It makes us feel good because we know we’re doing good. As we lead the way to a greener future, we do it together. We’re all about connections - with each other, with our customers and with the world. Just as our platform brings the world together, it’s our ambition that connects us. We motivate each other to go beyond our limits, to experiment, to fail and to always grow. 

With over 110 million visits every month to our platform and £4.3 billion in net ticket sales, we're always innovating and making moves towards our final destination — a world where travel is as simple, seamless, and affordable as it should be. 

And we couldn't do any of it without our incredible people driving us forward. Today, we're a FTSE 250 company that's proudly home to more than 1000 Trainliners from over 60 nationalities across offices in London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Edinburgh, Berlin, Madrid and Brussels. It's this diversity that energises us and makes us stronger, helping us to achieve amazing things. 

With our sights firmly set on further European growth, there is no better time to jump on board this high-speed train and be part of our continued success. 

Great journeys start with Trainline. 

Job Description

The role of the Head of Engineering will oversee Engineering Managers across multiple autonomous teams within the organization, aligned to Strategic Themes. They will be accountable for engineering delivery within their teams and will report on delivery plans, progress, risks and issues at their Strategic Themes’ Monthly Business Reviews.  

They will inspire teams to do great work, whilst reducing planning and execution friction. They will ensure team structures, delivery implementation, architectural and tooling choices are working effectively and make improvements where required. 

The Head of Engineering will also be aware of wider business requirements and will take onboard the expertise of colleagues to make technical choices that are then driven through to implementation and adoption. They will be able to build relationships across the company, be able to work with others and lead by example, translating vision to practical solutions on the ground. They will build strong partnerships with other senior stakeholders in the business including Product, Commercial, Marketing and Industry Relations. 

The Head of Engineering will be a technologist, ideally participating in technical communities, and with previous experience of managing an agile development capability. 

As Head of Engineering at Trainline you will... 🚄

• Oversee technical choices across the Strategic Theme, ensuring quality, reliability and product direction are all carefully considered and that choices are aligned with the organisation’s technology roadmap.  
• Be a valued contributor to the evolution of the Trainline Platform architecture, sharing best practices, liaising with the Architecture team and influencing Trainline’s Technology Roadmap. 
• Keep up-to-date with the latest relevant technologies, regularly evaluating their use for Trainline engineering. 
• Proactively ensure that security, reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency are included in technical and architectural discussions and provide guidance through their own experience to ensure risks are identified and mitigated.  
• Use their own experience to develop our culture of continuous improvement and innovation.  
• Inspire teams to drive for quality in everything they do. 
• Grow and mentor a diverse team of engineers and Engineering Managers, ensuring they are clear on our strategy, customer focus and inclusive culture.  
• Build relationships with other Heads of Engineering & Heads of Service Delivery to deliver on strategic objectives. 
• Develop partnerships with other functions, such as Commercial, Finance, HR, Marketing, Legal and Industry Relations to deliver successful outcomes across the business, not just at the engineering level. 
• Assess their team’s approach and process maturity, coaching them on Agile methods for sustainable delivery. 
• Coach and mentor engineering leads and managers, ensuring teams are creating well articulated and structured goals that are understood within the teams and align to company strategy. 
• Own the engineering budget for their Strategic Theme(s). 
• Support building Trainline’s external technology brand in the community. 
• Identify trends of issues across engineering teams and proactively work with other engineering leaders to address issues. 
• Will contribute to the development and implementation of the appropriate software delivery lifecycle to support the business. 
• Drive continuous improvement of software delivery lifecycle within their Strategic Theme and contribute to best practices across the whole engineering organisation. 
• Ensure appropriate software quality to deliver maintainability and reduce costs of running the Platform. 
• Ensure that the ongoing maintenance and support of the products and Platform is of the highest quality. 
• Providing an environment for continuous innovation and improvement. 

Qualifications

Software Engineering Expertise 

• A solid background in technology with demonstrable career progression through roles with increasing technical proficiency. 
• Experience as a Software Developer and/or Architect. 
• Development experience including test driven development, SOA, CI/CD. 
• Substantial experience in building and running services/applications in an agile environment. 
• Proven experience working with cloud providers such as AWS. 
• Technically strong enough to understand and guide software development choices within the team. 
• Ability to learn quickly and adapt to new technologies and approaches. 

Managing Engineering Delivery  

• A passion for engineering practices working with diverse, multi-location teams. 
• A strong track record of software delivery in a technology driven business, preferably in a large-scale B2C environment.   
• Strong proponent of automation with a willingness and drive to automate everything, ideally with prior experience in writing, testing and implementing enterprise-grade pipelines.  
• Has ideally worked in a product development environment, experience of working in partnership with Product teams. 
• Able to work alongside Product colleagues to prioritise the team’s work and make the right choices to meet the team’s goals in agreed timescales. 
• Experience in managing services/applications development with many stakeholders.  
• Budgetary experience, managing an engineering team budget, able to make budgetary decisions and trade-offs. 
• Deadline driven, understands how to balance meeting business targets while operating in an agile environment. 

People Management 

• Proven experience building high performing engineering teams. 
• Experience in managing managers, guiding careers and helping individuals recognize their potential. 
• Experience in managing challenging people scenarios (eg, performance improvement processes and organisational structure changes). 
• Able to lead by example, a hands-on technical engineer who can coach and develop technical talent. 
• Able to spot learning needs and skill gaps within the team, identify the need for training and liaise with other managers and HR to deliver appropriate resources. 
• Management of small scale (5-10 person) development teams working within large scale environment (5-20 teams). 

Communication and Relationships 

• Excellent interpersonal, relationship building and influencing skills.  
• Experience of developing strong partnerships with other business functions. 
• Strong communicator, able to adapt communication style appropriately dealing with a range of levels of seniority and technical understanding in the organization, up to c-suite. 
• Able to communicate with confidence and gravitas at company executive level.  

Additional Information

Why should you jump on board? 

We pay special attention to learning and development and organise quarterly company learning days as well as offering a learning budget that can be put towards resources of your choice. We will cover the costs of your professional subscriptions and give you access to our very own learning platform. 

At Trainline, we care about the wellness of our employees. We host puppy therapy sessions, in-office yoga and run Mental Health First Aider training courses as well as having an Employee Assistance Program as one of our many company benefits.  

We regularly throw fun social events such pub quizzes, karaoke nights and our large-scale Summer and Winter Festivals every year. Additionally, we love hosting meetups in our amazing event spaces and having the opportunity to support internal and external community groups.  

We also hold companywide hackathons and our annual Trainline Tech Summit, which provides Trainliners with an opportunity to stand up and share their story, learnings, or new skills with their colleagues in a safe environment. 

Our flexi-first approach

We believe in the importance of a healthy work-life balance and the value of a flexible workforce. Our flexi-first approach outlines our commitment to a hybrid way of working and our expectations of Trainliners. A key part of what makes Trainline special is our people and the value we get from the buzz and energy of our workplaces, and that’s why we’re proud to offer the best of both worlds. In practice this means in–office attendance at least 40% of the time over a 12-week period for all Trainliners. These in-office days are typically team led to help us connect, collaborate and create together.  

Our Values 

• Think Big - We're building the future of rail 
• Own It - We care about every customer, partner and journey 
• Do Good - We make a positive impact 
• Travel Together - We're one team 

Interested in finding out more about what it's like to work at Trainline? Why not check out what our employees say about us on Glassdoor? You can also find out more information by following us on LinkedIn or our 'Life at Trainline' Instagram account.  

We value open expression at Trainline, we believe it’s the diversity of experience, backgrounds and perspectives of our employees that makes us who we are. We encourage everybody to play a part in changing the way people travel across the world.