Head of Software

Job Description

Northrop Grumman have a rare and exciting opportunity for a Head of Software to join our National Security Solutions business.  We are seeking someone who is passionate about people and is looking for a role to work as an excellent people manager to provide leadership to the Software Engineers in our UK workforce.

Different thinking for a Different world

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions to government and commercial customers worldwide. In Northrop Grumman’s rapidly growing UK Cyber and Intelligence business, we support our customers’ work to make the UK the safest place to live and do business, both physically and online.

Working with and alongside our customers, we use modern software engineering methods (Scaled Agile Development, DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering, micro-service architectures) and cutting edge techniques (data science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning) to tackle complex and challenging problems and deliver cost effective, reliable, supportable solutions.

Our solutions support complex analysis of substantial amounts of data, requiring state of the art ‘big data’, stream processing and cloud-based analytics, identifying and using ‘best of breed’ commercial and open source technologies and integrating them with our own software to meet customer needs quickly and efficiently.

At Northrop Grumman we pride ourselves on our ability to combine agile development with sound engineering and security practices to ensure that our solutions are robust and resilient; designed and built to start secure and stay secure against ever evolving cyber security threats. As well as designing for security, Information Assurance and legal / policy compliance, we actively assess products and services, identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses that could be exploited by cyber attackers, and we create and run exercises to pit cyber security specialists against secure systems and each other.

We carry out research and innovation locally in the UK, with commercial and academic partners, and across our 85,000+ worldwide workforce.

How you will make a difference

For us, having an efficient and effective team that really enjoy the work they do starts by having excellent Line Managers. 

This role is the Head of the line management tree and therefore needs to set the bar high for people management in this team and lead by example.

As the Head of Software you will have had responsibility for all the Software Engineers.  You will not need to be the top technical engineer, but will need good software knowledge background to be able to lead this team.

You will make a difference by ensuring the Software Engineers really enjoy work for us, and our customer get the benefit of an efficient and effective team.

This person will build an efficient and effective professional team as the senior line manager to the Software Engineers in the UK company. This will include providing mentoring and coaching to Software Team Leaders, engagement activities to the Software Engineering workforce and building an inclusive, supportive, high performing workforce.

What we are looking for:

You will have demonstrable experience in managing teams of Software Engineers and will understand how to support individuals and team managers both pastorally and in their professional development. You will know how to enable and empower high performing technical staff in their roles through mentoring, coaching and engagement activities.

It is vital that you have experience of the modern software development methodologies employed by Northrop Grumman UK, so that experience can be used as the basis for leadership of our highly talented staff across the country. You should understand how technical leadership works in multidisciplinary Agile teams that have a high level of stakeholder engagement

You will be a confident people manager, communicator and have proven people management experience.

Role Responsibilities:

Resourcing & Workforce Management

• Develop and maintain workforce plans with the Discipline Lead, Business & Technical leadership, covering resourcing and training & development.These plans are to plot the team's performance, development and aspirations so that relevant plans can be implemented.
• Proactively recruit to close gaps in workforce plans. Ensure all programme teams are adequately resourced with suitable qualified and experienced engineers, raising requests for training as required.
• Work proactively with the businessto help solve resourcing single point of failures or demand conflicts.
• Work with the Talent Scheme Lead to provide support to our early career talent pipelines through identifying mentors and buddies from within the team.

Discipline Management

• Direct line management responsibilities for a team of Software Engineering managers - including tasks such as (but not limited to):  Career development, talent management, performance management, resource and leave management.
• Provide leadership for the team of Managers by management coaching, mentoring, motivating and training them to ensure their team perform at their best.
• Has responsibility for multiple teams within Software Engineering. Accountable for the leadership and development of their Line Managers and hold them to account for the development and management of their associated teams.
• Hold regular team meetings to flow down company information and discuss any issues or ideas for improvements.
• Provide career progression in alignment to the relevant Discipline competency framework & expected behaviours and NG Leadership Characteristics.
• Hold regular 1-1 meetings with all team staff to provide the opportunity to discuss career opportunities, vent any worries or concerns they have, whether professionally or personally.
• Be accountable for engagement activities for all the teams within role scope, working with key stakeholders on wider focus activities within NSS.
  • Conduct regular continuous improvement team discussion to improve efficiency.
  • Ensure all staff have performance goals set at the start of the year and results completed by the end of the year.
  • Work with the PMs to ensure utilisation targets are maintained.

Programme Performance

• Responsible for ensuring that Software work is performed correctly across all programmes.

Additional information:

• Looking for flexibility? Talk to us at the application stage about what may be possible.
• This role will require travel to our sites across the UK 
• Clearance requirements: The post-holder must be able hold and maintain UK Government clearances