Senior Engineering Manager – Developer Experience

Preferred location   

Krakow / Poland 

Key relationships   

• Heads of Technology, Enterprise Change Management, Architecture, IT  

• Operations, Heads of Regions & Products   

• External senior technologists’ networks and key technology vendors 

• Senior Business Stakeholders 

• Platform Enablement and Products 

Your Team 

The Developer Experience team owns the developer tooling landscape and developer experience that IG’s engineers work with every day. We are responsible for the tools engineers reach for first: GitLab for source control and CI/CD, Backstage as the internal developer portal, and the broader ecosystem of platform tooling. 

Our mission is to make the experience of building software at IG fast, intuitive, and friction-free.  

Your role in the Team's Success 

The Senior Engineering Manager of Developer Experience is a people-first engineering leader responsible for building, scaling, and continuously improving the tools and platforms that every engineering team at IG depends on daily. This role owns the developer tooling landscape and developer experience, partnering with Enablement, Product, Quality, and Performance Engineering teams to reduce friction, improve developer satisfaction, and raise the bar on how software is built and shipped at IG. 

You will lead a high-performing team of engineers, set a clear and compelling roadmap for developer productivity, and be the senior voice championing engineering experience across the organisation. 

What you'll do 

Leadership & People Management 

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of engineers focused on developer tooling and cloud platform experience 

• Set clear goals and expectations, run regular 1:1s, and actively support the career development and progression of every direct report 

• Foster a culture of ownership, psychological safety, and continuous improvement 

• Partner with recruiting to attract and retain strong engineering talent as the team grows 

Developer Tooling & Platform Ownership 

• Own the roadmap for IG’s internal developer tooling landscape, with GitLab and Backstage at the core, and a wider ecosystem including Kong, Docker, and cloud platform tooling 

• Ensure the developer portal (Backstage) evolves as a genuine self-service hub: service catalogue, scaffolding, documentation, and workflow automation all in one place 

• Drive standardisation and simplification across the toolchain, reducing the number of ways engineers have to learn to do the same thing 

• Own the health and reliability of the tooling platforms, ensuring high availability and a consistently good experience across all engineering locations 

Developer Experience 

• Define how IG measures developer experience and productivity: DORA metrics, developer satisfaction surveys, onboarding time, and tool adoption signals 

• Identify and systematically remove the friction points that slow engineers down, from local development environments to cloud access to CI/CD feedback loops 

• Collaborate with Enablement, Quality Engineering, and Performance Engineering to ensure the tooling and platforms actively support testing, observability, and performance practices 

• Champion developer experience as a first-class engineering concern with senior stakeholders and across engineering leadership 

What you'll need for this role 

• Engineering Leadership: 8+ years of engineering experience with 4+ years in an engineering management role; proven ability to lead multi-disciplinary engineering teams and deliver against a technical roadmap 

• Developer Experience & Tooling: Strong understanding on improving developer productivity through internal platforms, tooling, and developer portals (e.g. Backstage); familiarity with DORA metrics and developer experience frameworks 

• CI/CD & DevOps Practices: Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions or equivalent) and DevOps/DevSecOps principles; experience driving standardisation of build, test, and deployment workflows 

• Communication & Influence: Strong ability to communicate technical strategy and progress to senior stakeholders; skilled at influencing without authority and building alignment across teams 

• People Development: Proven track record of mentoring engineers and building healthy, high-performing team cultures; experience running effective 1:1s, performance reviews, and growth conversations 

Profile 

• 6-8 years of experience in Platform Engineering    

• At least 4+ years of working experience in the field people management 

• Proven leadership and management skills with the ability to optimize team performance and development    

• Excellent relationship management skills with the ability to engage, negotiate and manage key stakeholders and suppliers    

• Act as a trusted advisor and partner with major business and support functions in our organization    

• Demonstrate leadership by managing and monitoring quality and teams efficiency    

• Good understanding of quality assurance principles, testing methodologies, metrics and reporting     

• Deep understanding of metrics and how to show value of change    

• Analytical thinking, approach to problem-solving    

Mobility   

Travelling as needed to IG locations to network and work with team members, stakeholders, and vendor partners.