CTO – Product and Engineering — Managed-Services Unit

The mandate

A listed managed-services unit must increase the pace of product engineering while moving from licences to subscriptions. Release commitments have accelerated, but reliability work, customer variants and architecture constraints compete for the same teams. The board has concluded that incremental process tuning will not create the required step change without new technical and product authority.

The CTO – Product and Engineering will steward a perimeter of approximately £2,250 million in annual recurring revenue and lead around 500 employees and material partners. Scope includes product technology, engineering, architecture, quality, reliability, developer experience, technical programme delivery, cloud economics, suppliers and leadership. The reporting line leads to the Group Chief Executive or the designated executive committee sponsor for product technology.

The transition needs a coherent product-engineering baseline. Roadmap demand, customer commitments, operational load, technical debt, regulatory work and skilled capacity should be reconciled. The CTO will identify where apparent slowness is caused by queueing, rework or architectural coupling rather than insufficient individual output.

Subscription value changes release priorities. Entitlement, provisioning, usage, billing, renewal, observability and customer success need reliable product support. Features that create a booking but weaken adoption or increase manual service may damage lifetime economics. Product and engineering should share measures from decision to retained use.

Pace will be improved through smaller decisions and safer flow. Lead time, completion, change failure, rollback, defect escape and adoption should guide intervention. Approval and team interfaces that add no risk value need removal, while security, privacy and service controls remain independent where consequence demands it.

Reliability is a product obligation, not an interruption to delivery. Service objectives, incidents, recovery, recurring toil and customer impact should determine protected investment. The CTO will prevent roadmap pressure from repeatedly deferring structural fixes and require learning to change architecture, testing or operating practice.

Architecture health must be visible economically. Coupled services, duplicated components, data complexity and vendor dependence affect speed, cloud cost and failure. The leader will choose where common platforms create leverage and where product-specific design remains justified. Large rewrites require staged evidence and a credible migration path.

Engineering commitments need explicit trade-offs. Every material promise should carry capacity, dependency, confidence and a displaced alternative. Executive escalation cannot create free capacity. Commercial leaders should see the reliability and service consequence before committing a bespoke requirement.

Technical leadership will combine principal-engineer authority with accountable management. The CTO will assess product technologists, engineering leaders and architects for enterprise judgement, then clarify domains and succession. Critical systems cannot rely on founders or specialists whose knowledge has never been transferred.

Supplier and cloud decisions will reflect total economics. Consumption, licence terms, service quality, portability and exit effort should enter build-versus-buy choices. Benefits must reconcile to actual capacity, contracts or consumption rather than an architecture forecast.

Why this seat is open

An accelerated transition has created an urgent replacement. Interim leadership protects current releases and services, but the subscription roadmap cannot remain under split ownership. The board seeks appointment within six to eight weeks through a confidential external process.

What you will own

• Reconcile product demand, engineering capacity and operational load.
• Steward technology supporting approximately £2,250 million of annual recurring revenue.
• Align releases with subscription adoption and lifetime economics.
• Increase safe delivery flow while preserving essential controls.
• Lead approximately 500 employees and material partners.
• Fund reliability and architecture health as product outcomes.
• Govern commitments through visible capacity and dependency trade-offs.
• Build technical leadership, knowledge continuity and succession.

The first 12 months

During the first 90 days, reconstruct demand and capacity, meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to pace and assess leaders. Stabilise acute reliability risk. Agree roadmap, architecture, service and investment gates with the board.

Months four to nine should reset commitments, simplify delivery flow and address priority architecture constraints. Improve testing, platform leverage and supplier economics while filling leadership gaps. Early evidence may include shorter lead time, fewer failed changes, reduced toil or stronger product adoption.

By year end, release confidence, architecture health and engineering productivity should be mutually reinforcing. Performance must remain within 10% of approval, and three forecasts should reconcile roadmap, capacity, cloud cash, customers and people. Any severe technical escalation needs verified closure inside a 30-day limit.

What the board will measure

• Roadmap delivery and adoption supported by credible confidence ranges.
• Lead time, completion, change failure and defect escape.
• Reliability investment reducing incidents, recovery time and toil.
• Architecture choices improving flow and total cloud economics.
• Retention over 90% for pivotal technologists and ready succession for 70% of direct reports.
• Customer-specific commitments exposing their full capacity and service cost.

The person

You are a CTO, SVP Engineering or Product Technology Head with 18–22 years in software, cloud, managed services or an adjacent technology enterprise. You have made consequential architecture and engineering trade-offs while scaling release throughput and reliability.

Your accountable P&L, book, budget or portfolio has been at least £1,300 million, and you have led 500 or more people. Evidence should show operating outcomes sustained over two reporting periods, not a temporary release surge.

You understand subscription product systems, engineering flow, reliability and technical economics. You can stop an attractive commitment, protect expert followership and explain architecture consequences to a board in commercial terms.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is £290,000–390,000 plus annual incentive and LTI. This permanent London position is hybrid and supports international relocation rather than full remote work. Notice periods up to six months are acceptable.

Confidentiality

The organisation, predecessor, roadmap and technical evidence remain confidential. Identifying details will follow reciprocal interest under a mutual undertaking; facts and scale are intentionally composite.