dunnhumby
Engineering Director
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dunnhumby
dunnhumby is the global leader in Customer Data Science, partnering with the world’s most ambitious retailers and brands to put the customer at the heart of every decision. We combine deep insight, advanced technology, and close collaboration to help our clients grow, innovate, and deliver measurable value for their customers.
dunnhumby employs nearly 2,500 experts in offices throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas working for transformative, iconic brands such as Tesco, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Unilever, and Metro.
Role Purpose:
The Engineering Director, P&P is accountable for defining, evolving, and continuously strengthening the technical direction, delivery performance, and organizational capability of the P&P engineering organization across Manchester, Gurugram, and Rochester.
The role ensures the portfolio continues to deliver reliably against product and client commitments while modernizing technology, improving engineering effectiveness, and protecting quality, security, reliability, and operational resilience. It connects technical and delivery decisions to product, client, and commercial outcomes, balancing near-term commitments with long-term product health and sustainable engineering investment.
THE ROLE
Key Accountabilities
Technical Vision, Strategy & Modernisation
- Own and evolve the engineering and technology strategy for the P&P product portfolio, ensuring choices support product strategy, client needs, scalability, and long-term commercial outcomes.
- Provide deep technical and architectural leadership across software architecture, data-intensive systems, engineering practices, quality, security, reliability, and operational resilience. Maintain sufficient proximity to the technology to assess complex systems, significant decisions, risks, and trade-offs independently, and challenge senior technical leaders effectively.
- Shape and lead the technical evolution of the portfolio and its alignment with the wider platform strategy, while protecting service continuity, product health, and client commitments.
- Establish and govern a clear approach to technical debt, technology obsolescence, product health, and engineering standards, ensuring risks and investment needs are transparent and consistently managed across teams.
- Strengthen technical leadership, shared ownership, succession, and knowledge across the organization so capability is resilient and not dependent on a small number of individuals.
Reliable Delivery & Execution Discipline
- Be accountable for predictable delivery against agreed product and client commitments, ensuring plans are realistic, evidence-based, and owned by the right leaders.
- Establish an engineering operating model that gives clear accountability, decision rights, dependency management, and early intervention on systemic delivery risks.
- Maintain visibility of material commitments, dependencies, and risks, holding the engineering leadership team accountable for outcomes and intervening where delivery, quality, or cost is at risk.
- Continuously improve engineering and delivery practices so they are effective, consistently applied, and aligned to reliable product outcomes.
Product, Domain & Commercial Leadership
- Develop a deep understanding of the P&P portfolio, retail domain, and the business processes it supports, using that insight to shape engineering priorities and decision making.
- Partner closely with the Product Director to shape product strategy, roadmaps, investment priorities, and long-term portfolio direction.
- Bring a clear engineering perspective to product and commercial decisions, including feasibility, cost, risk, quality, resilience, and long-term implications.
- Manage the allocated P&P engineering budget and workforce plan, making effective investment trade-offs across permanent and partner capacity, technology, operations, and modernisation in line with product, client, and commercial priorities.
- Align engineering capacity with the highest-value customer, business, and technology outcomes, working with Product to balance client commitments, product development, operational needs, and technical investment.
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Client & Stakeholder Engagement
- Build trusted, proactive relationships with senior stakeholders within our strategic clients, and with key internal stakeholders across Product, Commercial, and Technology.
- Represent Engineering confidently in strategic discussions, governance forums, and key delivery reviews, translating complex technical issues into clear risks, options, and decisions.
- Provide timely, credible communication on priorities, delivery confidence, technical choices, dependencies, and emerging risks.
- Constructively challenge commitments where scope, capacity, sequencing, or technical evidence do not support sustainable outcomes.
- Lead the cross-functional resolution of significant issues across Product, Commercial, Delivery, and Engineering, balancing client expectations with sustainable product and engineering outcomes.
Leadership, People & Culture
- Lead, coach, and develop the engineering leadership team, including senior engineering management, engineering managers, and senior technical leaders across Manchester, Gurugram, and Rochester.
- Create a culture of high performance, constructive challenge, collaboration, accountability, and visible leadership aligned to company values.
- Strengthen leadership capability, consistency, succession, and organizational health across teams and locations.
- Remain visible and connected to teams, using first-hand insight to improve engagement, ways of working, and organizational effectiveness.
Manchester Site Leadership
- Partner with the Manchester site leader to strengthen engagement, leadership effectiveness, and culture across the location.
- Act as a visible senior leader within the Manchester office, contributing to wider site and company priorities and strengthening collaboration across functions.
Jobs to be done (Activities)
- Set the technical direction and modernisation agenda for the P&P portfolio, working with architects and senior technical leaders to identify constraints, risks, and opportunities.
- Lead through the Technology leadership team, creating clear ownership, decision rights, and a consistent operating rhythm across locations.
- Partner with Product to shape strategy, roadmaps, prioritisation, and investment choices, ensuring engineering capacity is focused on the highest-value outcomes.
- Oversee delivery confidence for material product and client commitments, using evidence-based planning, dependency management, and early intervention where risks emerge.
- Build trusted client and stakeholder relationships, representing Engineering with clarity, commercial judgement, and technical credibility.
- Strengthen organizational capability, succession, engagement, and cross-location collaboration across Manchester, Gurugram, and Rochester.
THE TALENT
Experience / Track Record
- Significant experience leading a large complex software engineering organization through multiple levels of engineering management and technical leadership.
- Substantial software engineering and architecture experience, with the technical depth to assess complex systems independently, challenge senior technical leaders, and set technology direction.
- Proven record of leading the modernisation of complex, business-critical product portfolios while maintaining service continuity and delivery commitments.
- Demonstrable success in improving delivery predictability, engineering effectiveness, reliability, and operational performance at organizational scale.
- Strong judgement across architecture, software delivery, technical debt, quality, security, DevOps, and production operations.
- Experience leading distributed or international engineering organizations through clear operating models, leadership accountability, and effective governance.
- Experience partnering with senior Product leadership to shape strategy, investment, prioritisation, and long-term portfolio direction.
- Strong commercial judgement, with experience managing senior client and stakeholder relationships and connecting engineering investment to customer and business outcomes.
- Evidence of building effective leadership teams, developing successors, and strengthening organizational capability, engagement, and collaboration.
- Credibility, judgement, and communication skills to lead decisively through significant technical, delivery, client, and organizational challenges.
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dh Spike
You are sought out for:
- Owning the technical vision and delivery discipline that enables P&P to deliver reliably, modernise safely, and scale engineering outcomes across locations.
- Balancing enterprise trade-offs between client commitments, product development, technical investment, service continuity, and long-term product health.
- Providing clear, credible engineering judgement on complex architecture, delivery, risk, and commercial decisions.
- Building leadership capability and accountability across engineering management and technical leadership so the organization is resilient, connected, and high performing.
- Applying a deep understanding of the P&P domain and client operating context to engineering decisions and senior stakeholder conversations, representing Engineering in a trusted, proactive, and commercially grounded way.
Leadership
- You will provide visible, consistent leadership across Manchester, Gurugram, and Rochester, creating clarity where there is ambiguity and strengthening confidence in engineering delivery.
- You will build a culture of constructive challenge, shared ownership, collaboration, and accountability across engineering, Product, and client-facing teams.
- You will make complex technical and delivery issues simple, actionable, and decision-ready for senior stakeholders.
CHALLENGES
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P&P supports business-critical retail decisions for major clients.
The Pricing & Promotions portfolio helps retailers make complex, data-led decisions that influence customer value, commercial performance, and execution across their businesses. Its products operate at significant scale and are embedded in important client processes, making reliability, quality, and continuity essential.
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The portfolio must evolve while continuing to deliver for clients.
P&P has an established product and technology estate, and significant progress has been made in strengthening delivery predictability, engineering practices, and operational performance. The next phase requires a clear product and engineering direction, continued modernisation, and closer alignment with the wider platform strategy, without compromising existing commitments or product health.
Client context and commercial judgement are central to the role.
The portfolio is shaped by the needs and investment priorities of strategic clients. The Engineering Director must understand their operating context, build trusted senior relationships, and balance immediate client commitments with scalable product development, technical investment, and the longer-term interests of the wider portfolio.
P&P is delivered through a distributed organization.
Engineering teams and leaders are based across Manchester, Gurugram, and Rochester. The opportunity is to strengthen shared ownership, leadership consistency, succession, and collaboration across locations, while maintaining clear accountability and reliable execution. As a Manchester-based senior leader, the role will also contribute to the engagement, leadership, and culture of the wider site.
AI creates an opportunity to improve both the product and how Engineering operates.
Rapid developments in AI and agentic technology create opportunities to enhance P&P capabilities, improve engineering effectiveness, and deliver new value for clients. The role will provide the technical judgement to identify where AI can create measurable advantage and ensure it is adopted responsibly, securely, and sustainably.
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