Head of Platform Engineering

Position: Head of Platform Engineering 

Reporting to: Chief Technology Officer – Group Functions 

Location: Lisbon 

Type: Permanent  

Band: III 

Company description 

Hiscox is a diversified international insurance group with a powerful brand, strong balance sheet and plenty of room to grow. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and headquartered in Bermuda (with the bulk of group leadership sitting in London), Hiscox has over 3,000 staff across 14 countries and 34 offices.   

The Team 
The Technology function is led by a CIO who manages a team of around 400 IT professionals in Europe and the US. Reporting to the CIO are 8 CTO’s responsible for Group functions, our 5 business units, Enterprise Architecture, and our IT Services team. This role forms part of the Group Enterprise Services (GES) Leadership Team, led by the CTO for GES, who are accountable for the full life cycle of around 140 applications. The Head of Platform Engineering will report directly into the CTO for GES. 

The Role 

Hiscox is hiring a Head of Platform Engineering to help shape and transition Hiscox Group functions and business units into an Agile value stream based operating model.   

The role spans the entire GES portfolio as well as centralised services used by the business units and sits as a direct report to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Group Enterprise Systems (GES). The remit includes all business applications within the Platform Engineering team, which includes our DevOps capabilities, integration platforms, digital layers, and more as we grow this core capability.  This is a new capability intended to offer DevOps capabilities for those applications used in Group, as well as operating and maintaining centralized services and platforms that are used by the various Business Units. 

As a key member of the GES leadership team, the Head of Platform Engineering will be responsible for defining and aligning the technology roadmaps for the Platform Engineering function as we build out this new capability in the centre. The team includes numerous engineering teams, starting first with a DevOps team and expanding the capabilities as the landscape of centralised services grows.  

Key Responsibilities 

• Collaborate with Technology leadership teams in other BUs in setting and driving the outcomes for centralised services to ensure they support the group technology goals to Simplify, Protect and Enable the business 

• Providing effective and proactive support and expertise to programmes and projects, creating innovative and actionable plans, and optimising solution delivery  

• Interpret and contextualise business requirements into actionable technology roadmaps with well-defined benefits and cost requirements 

• In conjunction with the Head of Architecture, develop and execute product strategies aligned with Hiscox’s overall goals and objectives to ensure consistency and quality of solutions  

• Support the end-to-end product development process, including ideation, requirements gathering, prioritisation and roadmap creation 

• Lead, advocate, and drive adoption of best practices to ensure the standardisation of outputs across the core function value streams  

• Support the planning and execution of new product/feature launches, ensuring effective messaging, scheduling, and monitoring of metrics to drive improvements and satisfaction 

• Lead and manage a team of DevOps engineers and other platform engineers as needed, fostering a collaborative and high-performing culture within the team, and providing guidance, mentorship and development opportunities 

• Advise the Platform Engineering teams on performance, scalability, reliability, availability and other operational concerns to define appropriate metrics and KPIs 

• Promote a commercially oriented culture where the Platform Engineering teams recognize their importance to Hiscox’s commercial aims and work to enable them 

• Ensure the provision of all centralised services to meet the quality, resilience and usability of all user groups 

• Act as the escalation point internally and externally for high priority concerns, being available to answer questions, clarify requirements and provide general guidance 

• Manage engagement with 3rd parties, through RFI and/or RFP processes to the implementation and run phases including attending QBR sessions where appropriate 

• Own the risk registry, audit requirements, and financial management for the Platform Engineering remit 

• Stay up to date with industry trends and market dynamics to identify opportunities for product innovation and growth 

Required experience 

• 5+ years in a senior Technology leadership role coupled with extensive senior stakeholder engagement experience and commercial/financial awareness 

• 5+ years in a team management role, providing coaching and mentoring, and leveraging competencies/capabilities across the team to achieve overall business outcomes 

• Deep knowledge of technical and functional aspects required to fulfil the role inc. regulatory knowledge, especially knowledge of Operational Resilience requirements, as well as business continuity and DR planning  

• Engaging communication and facilitation skills, both for in person and virtual settings 

• Experience of running successful teams in parallel with measured goals and objectives (OKR’s) 

• Strong knowledge of DevOps methodology and technologies as well as experience leading or working close with DevOps engineers 

• Experience managing Cloud/SaaS applications, APIs and legacy applications with a strong understanding on how to migrate towards being a digital, cloud and API-driven capability 

• Experience with the evaluation and selection of new technologies to validate if a considered technology is capable of delivering against the requirements 

• Experience implementing operational processes improvements through automation and/or process design/redesign 

• Experience in cost optimisation through third party and operating model rationalisation programmes 

• Strong knowledge and experience of build, deployment, change and release processes and automation  

• Strong knowledge in data engineering and analytics principles and technologies 

• Experience working with standard collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence, or Miro 

• Extensive experience working on large, complex projects or products with proven ability to deliver lasting value beyond go live 

• Experience operating in a challenging organisational environment with a requirement to balance differing priorities and demands 

• An aptitude for challenging the status quo to ensure continuous improvement with creative solutions 

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success.   

Working life doesn’t always have to be in the office, so we have introduced hybrid working to encourage a healthy work life balance.  This hybrid working model is set by the team rather than the business to enable you to manage your own personal work-life balance.