Cloud Engineering Product & Engineering Director

Join the Access Family and see how we make software ideas become a reality!

Our core value of ‘Love Work, Love Life, Be You’ has been central to our success and so we’re looking for people to join us who share our passion for making things better every day and help us continue to grow.

We are the number one UK headquartered software provider in the UK and are forecasted to grow to a global population of over 12,000 employees by 2026.

 What are we all about?

At Access, we love software and how technology never stays the same. It's this obsession that drives us to work closely across sectors to understand the business needs of our customers - from the Hospitality sector, to Manufacturing industry, to Not for Profit’s to Construction, and many more.

We're passionate about helping our customers stay one step ahead of the challenges facing their industry and business, currently helping over 60,000 customers to have the freedom to do more.

About you:

The CE Product & Engineering Director will be responsible for our hosting (IaaS and Product Hosting) products, including Architecture and Automation both in physical datacentres and hyperscalers, alongside our MSP offering ensuring the products deliver the best customer and commercial outcome, driving growth across the group both organic and through integration of M&A acquired businesses.  They will work with not only the Cloud Engineering Management team, but also with the Global Product & Engineering Directors, evangelising the cloud ecosystem and vision for the products with both a commercial and functional lens, understanding their divisional objectives and how best to aid them on achieving that. They will stand in front of the company and provide clarity of direction and execution, and you will also be on stage in front of customers, driving excitement and clarity of vision of the roadmap for Cloud Engineering.

Day-to-day, you will:

• Reporting to the Senior Director for Cloud Engineering, this individual is the product evangelist for Cloud Engineering and part of the global management team for Cloud Engineering. They will ensure a collaborative and partnership approach to drive success to the region and global operations. Access will scale to be a £2Bn software vendor in the next 5 years which will equate to more than 5x in compute and storage so need expert hosting to match that, along with the creativity and commercial awareness to make sure the hosted systems are on the right platforms at the right cost.
• Access maintain all different types, scales and ages of technology up to hyperscalers presence in AWS & Azure and down to VMWare in physical datacentres. The role will be charged with defining, evangelising and executing Access Cloud Strategy both regionally and across the global function.
• Operate as part of the Cloud Engineering organisation and enable migration and enablement towards a DevOps org structure. Create a seamless conduit for Engineers to deploy their software within an innovative environment.
• Present to the C-Level and Board on ROI and strategic planning as Access scale out its cloud capabilities, while being a strategic partner to the regional boards to deliver their vision and ensure commercial focus on cost of sale and hosting is maintained and optimised.
• Full accountability for the divisional P&L including architecture, services delivery, automation teams and Transformation and M&A,
• Product envisioning – working with Product Management leadership, the UX team, customers, and market data to envision the product portfolio future, as the dominant winning product portfolio in the market for the divisions through both Cloud products & Access Managed Services.
• Product management – proven track record of managing multiple products in a portfolio, driving product roadmaps through effective work prioritisation with product and engineering leadership
• Engineering leader – experience in leading or working closely with engineering teams in order to drive process adherence in the engineering teams in the divisions, keep a close eye on execution progress, and provide timely mitigations and correct expectations setting with stakeholders.
• Organisational leader – experience in managing multi-level organisations, managing people's career paths, low performers, high performers, top talent, attracting and retaining top talent in the organisation and driving high levels of organisational health.​
• Executive maturity – history of managing difficult situations while maintaining a calm and constructive attitude, working collaboratively with senior stakeholders, especially the divisional Managing Director, managing upwards with transparency, collaboratively working with peers and managing the direct line organisation with empowerment and accountability.​
• Commercial acumen – ability to understand the intricacies of the P/L of the division, being creative on maximising the revenue short and long term, while minimising costs, and understanding the value creation aspects of a private equity owned business.​
• Reporting and Analytics: Develop and present regular reports on cloud infrastructure performance, operational metrics, and cost analysis to senior management.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including internal IT, product & engineering, and business units, to understand their cloud + infrastructure requirements and align cloud operations with organizational goals.
• Managed Services Proposition: Work in the key sectors to devise a go to market strategy and drive product improvement to deliver truly world class Managed Services.

Your skills and experiences might also include:

• Experience leading a sophisticated technology organisation within a global environment. Knowledge of
• Software / SaaS as well as infrastructure.
• Technology evangelist who has deep understanding of the old ‘classic data centre Infrastructure’ and the new ‘hyperscale’ with the ability to create a vision and practical plan to move between the two.
• Preferably comes from an engineering background with a track record of managing large operational
• teams but also has deep understanding of P&L management and can build and communicate a 5-year strategic plan.
• Thought leader in managed services,  hosting and cloud services with the ability to drive change to create new organisational capabilities.
• Experience in developing products and services within the IaaS/MSP and ‘go to market’ strategies.
• Demonstrable ability to see outside of the box and maintain a big picture view at all times.
• Exposure to acquiring businesses, performing due diligence and technical M&A integration is a plus.
• Proven leadership skills with the ability to influence at all levels including experience of working at Board or Investor level.
• Ability to pivot between strategic thinking and operational delivery. Combination of vision (thinking strategically) and ability to deliver through tactical execution.
• Collaborative methodology
• Ability to defuse tense situations and put customer view point forwards
• Results driven – accountable, able to balance strategic thinking with attention to detail and operational end-to-end delivery, problem solving, prepared to go over & above when required.
• Have the ability to measure your success through the use of key performance indicators and scorecards.
• Excellent communication skills. You are a confident, clear, and warm communicator with a flexible and constructive approach to customers, cross-functional teams, and executive leadership.
• Leading and developing a team, to create a compelling long-term vision, strategy, and detailed roadmap.
• Must be able to attract top talent, build apprenticeship programmes and develop strong career development pathways for top talent.
• Self-motivated and self-directed.

What does Access offer you?

We are a growing software company, and we deliver on what we say we do! We take the development of our people very seriously and we will work with you to carve out your success plan and an opportunity to accelerate your career and make a real difference.

On top of a competitive salary, our standard 25 days holiday (which goes up the longer you’re with us), and a matched pension scheme you’ll also be able to choose from a range of benefits to suit you. We pride ourselves on being an organisation that gives back so you’ll also have a charity day you can take to support something that matters to you.  

At Access we’re all about helping everyone Love Work and Love Life. Why? Because we believe people can only be their best when they can be themselves. So, if you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn’t match perfectly, we’d still love to hear from you. You might just be whom we are looking for.

We love the fact that we’re all different. We believe by having more diverse perspectives at work improves how we run our business, helps us to better support our customers, and when you think about it, it’s just more fun!

What’s holding you back? Come and be part of our Amazing Access Family!

Love Work. Love Life. Be You.