Senior Delivery Manager
Grant Thornton UK · Leeds, United Kingdom +1 · 23d ago
Alternatively, Grant Thornton
At Grant Thornton we do things differently - looking to the future, driving ambitious growth and pioneering positive change in our industry. Providing audit, tax and advisory services, we empower clients through strategic insight, curiosity, and genuine partnership. And we empower our people with real opportunity, an inclusive culture and work life balance. A true alternative.
With over 5,000 people in the UK, and a presence in 150 global markets, we're on an ambitious journey, from great to exceptional, and we need the best people to help us achieve our potential. And with that comes the opportunity to help redefine what our industry looks like, and what you want from your career.
Job Description:
MORE THAN YOU EXPECTED
Grant Thornton UK LLP is part of a global network of independent audit, tax and advisory firms, made up of some 58,000 people in over 135 countries. We're a team of independent thinkers who put quality, inclusion and integrity first. All around the world we bring a different experience to our clients. A better experience. One that delivers the expertise they need in a way that goes beyond. Personal, proactive, and agile. That's Grant Thornton.
NEW GROUND WON'T BREAK ITSELF.
Every day our teams help people in businesses and communities to do what is right and achieve their goals.
As an Engineering Delivery Manager in our engineering function at GT, you will hold two connected responsibilities. Your priority is people management: line-managing a group of engineers and owning their growth, wellbeing and performance. Alongside that, you are the delivery and agile lead for one or more pods, owning capacity, flow and ways of working so those pods can do their best work.
We work in a matrix, so the people you line-manage and the people in the pods you support will not always be the same. Wherever we can we will align you to a domain and to the engineers within it, though while the function is still growing you may cover more than one pod or domain. People management is deliberately sticky: your reports stay with you for at least a full review cycle, and manager changes happen at natural review points rather than every time someone moves between pods.
Technical direction sits with the Tech Lead in each pod, and the what and the why sit with its Product Manager. This is a people, delivery and ways-of-working leadership role, not a hands-on coding one. We do not hire separate agile coaches, so the agile practice in your pods is yours to lead.
You will also help bring three former teams into one engineering function, working in an AI-native way with modern tooling, at a point when how we work is genuinely still taking shape and there is real room to influence it.
We're happy to talk flexible working and consider reduced hours and job shares, we'll support you to balance your work and life.
A look into the role
As an Engineering Delivery Manager at GT, you will:
Team leadership, people and resourcing
Line-manage and develop a group of engineers, through regular one to ones, honest feedback and real career conversations. This is your primary focus, and your reports may be deployed across more than one delivery pod
Own the growth, wellbeing and performance of the people you manage, drawing on input from the pods and leads they work with day to day
Build trust and psychological safety with your people, so they feel able to ask questions, admit what they do not know, and do their best work
Lead hiring, onboarding and retention for the people you manage
Own capacity and resource allocation for one or more pods, making sure the right engineers, skills and balance of experience are available to support what the pod is being asked to deliver, and being clear when capacity, skills or dependencies mean something cannot land as planned
Support everyone in the pods you lead to do their best work regardless of who manages them, and feed back to their managers on how they are getting on
Agile practice and delivery coaching
Act as the agile practitioner for your pods, choosing and implementing the ways of working that fit, and coaching each team to run its own ceremonies well
Use agile and lean techniques to keep improving the delivery cycle, and facilitate directly where a pod is not yet able to do that for itself
Raise agile maturity across engineering by sharing what works between pods, so each one is not solving the same problem on its own
Draw on the Agile Community of Practice for professional guidance, peer support and craft development, separate from your line-management reporting into the Head of Engineering
Delivery support and blocker resolution
Use your knowledge of the software delivery lifecycle to spot blockers and delivery risks early, and remove the ones the pod cannot resolve itself
Track flow metrics and use them to drive real improvement in how the pod works, rather than as a reporting exercise
Partner with the Product Manager in each pod. Priority is owned by the Product Manager, and capacity, resource allocation and skills fit are your call
Take on delivery ownership for pods and teams that do not have a dedicated Product Manager, so delivery always has a clear owner
Own capacity, resourcing and skills escalation for the pods you support, up to the Head of Engineering, so risks are visible early and trade-offs are clear
Partnership, community and AI-native delivery
Work in genuine partnership with the Tech Leads and Product Managers in your pods, and with your fellow managers, succeeding through them rather than around them
Draw on the engineering management community of practice for your own craft development and peer support, and share patterns across pods
Help your pods make the most of AI-native delivery, making sure they have the capacity and the discipline to review AI-assisted work properly, because review quality is the real constraint, not build speed
Knowing you're right for us
Joining us as an Engineering Delivery Manager, the minimum criteria you'll need is proven experience line-managing and developing engineers, and running agile delivery for a team or pod, including capacity and resource allocation. It would be great if you had some of the following skills, but don't worry if you don't tick every box, we'll help you develop along the way.
People-first leadership, with real strength in coaching, honest feedback, wellbeing and inclusive team-building
Comfort working in a matrix, developing people who are deployed across different teams and leading one or more delivery pods whose members you do not all line-manage
A track record of capacity planning, resource allocation, skills mapping, flow and unblocking in a sustainable delivery environment
Hands-on agile leadership: choosing and implementing the right ways of working, coaching a team to improve them, and using flow metrics to make delivery genuinely better
Confidence leading in a fast-moving, AI-native environment where the ways of working are still forming
Strong partnership skills, succeeding through your Tech Lead and Product Manager rather than around them
A background in software engineering, enough to earn engineers' trust and understand their world, without needing to do their job
Familiarity with modern DevOps and agentic development, for example Azure DevOps and Claude Code
Knowing we're right for you
Embracing uniqueness, the culture at Grant Thornton thrives on the contributions of all our people, we never settle for what is easy, we look beyond to deliver the right thing, for everyone. Building an inclusive culture, where we value difference and respect our colleagues helps our people to perform at the best of their ability and realise their potential.
Our open and accessible culture means you'll interact with leaders who are interested in you and everything you bring to our firm. The things that set you apart, we value them. That's why we give you the freedom to bring your whole self to work and pursue your passions inside and outside of work.
We're also committed to supporting you through different life stages, with a range of family friendly and wider leave policies. You can find full details of our reward, benefits and leave policies on our website: Reward and benefits.
Beyond the job
Life is more than work. The things you do, and the people you're with outside of work matter, that's why we're happy to look at flexible working options for all our roles, and we'll always do our best to keep your work and life in balance.
The impact you can make here will go far beyond your day job. From secondments, to fundraising for local charities, or investing in entrepreneurs in the developing world, you'll be giving back to society. It's that drive to do the right thing that runs through our every move, grounded in our firm's values - purposefully driven, actively curious and candid but kind.
We're looking for people who want to contribute, spark fresh ideas and go beyond expectations. People who want to be able to proudly do what's right, for the firm, our clients, our people and themselves. It's how it should be.
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