Director of Engineering

The Role

Location:Reigate / Hybrid

Reports to:Mark Mamone

Peer relationships:Head of Architecture, Platform & Engineering Enablement leadership, and Stack Engineering Leaders across ICT

WTW is seeking a technically credible engineering leader to mature and scale engineering capability across ICT. This is not a traditional Director of Engineering role: there are no direct reports. Instead, it is a strategic, deeply technical role focused on improving engineering consistency, software delivery maturity and effectiveness across five autonomous engineering stacks. They should be capable of being hands-on, for the purposes of reinforcing their strategic direction in the space of DevEx and being credible and authentic in the face of technical professionals. 

The stacks have been given autonomy to improve delivery velocity. The next phase retains that autonomy while introducing the right level of shared practice, tooling consistency and technical governance. Success depends on technical depth and the ability to build consensus — influencing engineering decisions through credibility and evidence rather than formal authority, and being willing to roll up sleeves and get into technical and code-level problems when it helps move things forward.

Their scope is to ensure that, across 400+ technical professionals dispersed into teams aligned to Products, they are able to reinforce modern best practices — especially in an agentic world — and bring the teams along a journey to a more consistent, modern, AI-native software development lifecycle. 

Key Responsibilities

• Engineering practice & SDLC maturity: raise the quality and consistency of software design, development, testing and delivery; improve route-to-live, release management, quality gates and CI/CD; reduce manual effort where automation adds value.

• Technical governance & consensus: provide constructive, hands-on challenge to engineering and architecture decisions; build alignment across stacks while respecting differing product, commercial and lifecycle needs; support pragmatic technical-debt strategies.

• Tooling & developer experience: assess and improve developer experience; standardise and consolidate tooling where it creates clear value (including the move to GitHub as a strategic platform).

• AI adoption across the SDLC:drive practical adoption of AI-enabled engineering across development, testing, review, documentation and support, aligned to governance and measurable outcomes.

• Engineering metrics & insight: improve visibility of delivery health using frameworks such as DORA and the LinearB pilot; define WTW-specific “lighthouse metrics” that reflect real effectiveness, not activity.

• Shared engineering capability: reduce duplication across stacks; promote reusable components, patterns and common engineering services where appropriate.

Technology Environment

The environment uses, or is moving towards: C#, .NET / .NET Core, Microsoft Azure, GitHub (an increasingly strategic platform), Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines and automation, and engineering analytics tooling including the LinearB pilot. The candidate should understand these well enough to challenge, guide and directly contribute to engineering direction.

What Success Looks Like

• Greater consistency in engineering practices and stronger technical alignment across stacks.

• Improved SDLC maturity, better CI/CD and reduced manual effort, through the adoption of AI, automation and other mechanisms

• Better developer experience and pragmatic tooling standardisation where it adds value.

• Clearer engineering metrics and improved visibility of delivery health.

• Increased reuse of engineering capability and greater adoption of AI-enabled practices.

• A healthy balance between stack autonomy and organisational consistency.

What you’ll bring 

This role suits a technical CTO-style leader who succeeds through credibility, judgement and consensus rather than line authority — and who stays close enough to the methodologies associated with software engineering and where necessary, the code,  to challenge, guide and, when needed, get directly involved in solving technical problems.

• Strong technical depth: able to hold their own with Stack Engineering Leaders and dive into architecture, code and delivery detail when it adds value.

• A natural consensus-builder: challenges decisions constructively, aligns strong personalities, and creates momentum without unnecessary friction.

• An excellent communicator who can simplify complex engineering topics for any audience.

• Outcome-focused, pragmatic and comfortable balancing consistency with stack autonomy.

Essential technical experience across several of modern software engineering practices; enterprise-scale delivery and SDLC optimisation; CI/CD and deployment automation; cloud-native engineering; application architecture and technical design; secure, quality-led delivery; engineering metrics; technical-debt management; and AI adoption within engineering.

Background & Industry

There is no rigid career blueprint; breadth is an advantage. Relevant backgrounds include engineering, architecture, platform or developer-experience leadership; DevOps or cloud transformation; and CTO / VP / Staff Engineering roles. The common thread is solving complex engineering challenges across multiple teams and stakeholders. Experience in regulated environments (financial services, insurance, banking, consulting, enterprise SaaS) is highly beneficial given the need for governance, quality and control. Insurance experience is beneficial but not essential.

What we offer 

Enjoy a benefits package designed to help you thrive, both professionally and personally. You'll receive 25 days of annual leave plus an extra WTW day to relax and recharge. Our comprehensive health and wellbeing offering includes private healthcare, life insurance, group income protection, and regular health assessments, all giving you peace of mind. Secure your future with our defined contribution pension scheme, featuring matched contributions up to 10% from the company.

We support your growth and balance with hybrid working options, access to an employee assistance programme, and a fully paid volunteer day to make a difference in your community. On top of these, you can opt into a variety of additional perks including an electric vehicle car scheme, share scheme, cycle-to-work programme, dental and optical cover, critical illness protection, and much more. Start making the most of your career and wellbeing with a range of benefits tailored for you.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We’re committed to equal employment opportunity and provide application, interview and workplace adjustments and accommodations to all applicants. If you foresee any barriers, from the application process through to joining WTW, please email [email protected]

(ICT_TECH TD_2025_51R)