Engineering Operations Manager

Rowden

Engineering Operations Manager overseeing engineering operations and improvements for scaling engineering teams at Rowden. Ensuring effective delivery through operational insights and initiatives.

Posted 5/21/2026full-timeBristol • 🇬🇧 United KingdomMid-LevelSenior💰 £50,000 - £80,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Building an accurate view of how engineering is operating across the business – unearthing delivery pressure points, capability gaps, scaling risks, and operational improvements early.
Interrogating forecasts, delivery assumptions, engineering demand, and technical constraints to understand the realities of trade-offs and priorities across the organisation.
Turning fragmented information from projects, teams, bids, and delivery reviews into clear operational insight that supports fast, high-conviction decisions.
Leading engineering improvement initiatives across tooling, workflows, and engineering ways of working.
Spending time close to the teams and the work, understanding how engineering operates on the ground rather than relying purely on reporting.
Driving the operational cadence of the engineering function across planning, reviews, reporting, and cross-functional coordination.
Coordinating the engineering graduate scheme, including rotations, placement planning, and helping build long-term engineering capability across the organisation.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Experience operating within scaling engineering or technical delivery environments where priorities, demand, and constraints are constantly evolving.
Strong systems thinking and operational judgement, with the ability to understand how decisions in one area impact delivery, teams, and engineering capacity elsewhere.
The ability to absorb complex information quickly, identify patterns and risks early, and bring clarity to ambiguous situations.
Sufficient technical fluency to engage confidently with engineers across multiple disciplines and build credibility within technical teams.
A naturally curious and proactive approach, with a desire to understand how teams really operate and where improvements can have the biggest impact.
Strong communication and influencing skills, with the confidence to challenge constructively and navigate competing viewpoints or priorities.
High levels of ownership, organisation, and follow-through, with the ability to maintain momentum across multiple initiatives at once.
A pragmatic mindset focused on helping engineering teams scale effectively without adding unnecessary process, overhead, or complexity.

Benefits

Comp & perks

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company.
We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.
Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles.
Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.
Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!

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Soft Skills

systems thinkingoperational judgementcommunication skillsinfluencing skillscuriosityproactive approachownershiporganisationfollow-throughpragmatic mindset