Head of Engineering Excellence

The Opportunity

Ford Credit Europe is undergoing a fundamental shift from a traditional financial services provider to a tech-driven mobility finance leader. As the Head of EU Engineering Excellence, you will be a key player in this transition — ensuring that as we scale our engineering organisation, our teams have the processes, tooling, and culture to do their best work consistently and sustainably.

Are you energised by building high-performing engineering organisations by challenging the status quo? Do you thrive on enabling teams through optimised processes, cutting-edge tooling, and data-driven insights? Are you excited by the challenge of working with a newly formed TPM function?

This role sits within the Technical Program Management function, centred around engineering enablement and operational excellence. You will work closely with engineering leadership, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Product Operations to define and embed the practices that make a great engineering organisation. We have a foundation to build on, and we're looking for someone with the experience and vision to take Engineering Excellence within the TPM Office to the next level.

What You're Good At

We're seeking an experienced leader who wants to create an engineering organisation that is efficient, effective, and fulfilling to work in. While specific experience is valuable, we're ultimately looking for the right attitude, leadership skills, and a genuine passion for high-performing teams. You likely excel in these areas:

• You have hands-on experience working in an enterprise software engineering team and understand the real challenges engineers face day to day.
• You are a natural problem-solver with a passion for improving workflows and building scalable, durable processes.
• You thrive in ambiguity and can create structure and direction from a blank canvas.
• You are highly organised, detail-oriented, and analytically strong.
• You embrace new technologies and can evaluate, select, and embed tools that genuinely improve productivity and developer experience.
• You identify risks in engineering processes early and develop practical strategies to address them.
• You are a strong communicator and collaborator, able to influence and build consensus across diverse teams without formal authority.
• You are passionate about people development and fostering a culture of continuous learning.
• You have a track record of driving adoption of new processes or tooling — you bring people along, you don't mandate from above.

What You'll Be Doing

As Head of EU Engineering Excellence, you will be the driving force behind a more effective, data-informed engineering organisation. Aligned with the Technical Program Management function's core mission of engineering enablement and operational excellence, you will collaborate closely with engineering leadership, SRE, and Product Operations to align on best practices and ways of working. Your responsibilities will span four key areas:

1. Ways of Working

• Analyse, streamline, and automate the engineering software delivery process.
• Design and implement robust reporting mechanisms to track progress, measure performance, and identify areas for improvement.
• Champion and drive the adoption of effective ways of working across the engineering organisation.
• Assist teams in following consistent processes for the establishment of goals, objectives, and cross-team prioritisation of work.
• Ensure the right data is captured upstream to enable accurate delivery reporting and engineering metrics.
• Stay close to the teams — listen actively, surface themes, and close the loop by translating feedback into meaningful process improvements.

2. Technology Enablement

• Own the engineering effectiveness technology roadmap, ensuring alignment with wider company strategy.
• Empower engineering teams to leverage tools to their fullest potential — identifying and implementing technologies that meaningfully enhance productivity, collaboration, and developer experience.
• Develop engaging training programmes to ensure seamless adoption and optimal use of tooling across the team.

3. People Development

• Support engineering leadership in fostering a culture of continuous learning and development.
• Help implement and maintain a consistent skills framework and development programme for engineers and managers.
• Support team members in developing improved approaches to building and delivering software.

4. Insights & Reporting

• Develop and maintain meaningful dashboards and reporting to surface data-driven insights to engineering teams and leadership.
• Ensure the right upstream data foundations are in place so that metrics and performance reporting are accurate and actionable.

 

What We're Looking For

We're looking for someone who is comfortable taking initiative and leading in an ambiguous environment. The list below is not a checklist — please do not be afraid to apply if you only meet some of the criteria. We're hiring for attitude and leadership potential over a perfect skill match.

• 4+ years of hands-on enterprise software engineering experience — you understand how engineering teams work from the inside.
• 2+ years of experience in engineering operations, developer experience, process improvement, or a closely related field.
• Experience building or leading an engineering operations or developer experience function is a strong plus but is not required.
• Proven track record of improving processes, implementing new technologies, and driving positive change within engineering organisations.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and influencing skills.
• Curiosity and a passion for problem solving, both conceptually and analytically.
• Experience working in a matrixed team structure and influencing across product areas.
• Drive to research, learn, and implement new technologies.
• The ability to work under pressure and adapt to change.

 

 

The Company is committed to diversity and equality of opportunity for all and is opposed to any form of less favourable treatment or harassment on the grounds of race, religion or belief, sex, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.

 

This is a full-time role, however we are keen to encourage applications from applicants who work flexibly including job-share applicants, who would like to work with another job-share applicant to do this role (even if you currently do not have a job-share partner). The Job Share Connect tool allows you to create your profile and then find a job share match.

 

This position is based in Dunton, and it is expected the successful candidate will be able to attend the Dunton for typically 4 days a week and remain flexible on the days they are required to attend the office according to business requirements