Engineering Lead

Company Overview

Metrea delivers effects-as-a-service to national security partners across five domains and more than a dozen mission areas. These include airborne ISR, electronic warfare, secure communications, aerial refueling, special air missions, aerial firefighting, and advanced simulation. We own the whole stack: designing, building, and operating turnkey capabilities that give our partners decisive, asymmetric advantage against rapidly evolving threats.

Our operating model is built around three interlocking pillars. The Support Groups provide a global shared-service – spanning people, finance, platform, operations, legal, and engagement. This frees up our Core Groups, who develop and own mission capabilities end-to-end, to focus entirely on delivery. The Market Groups apply a regional lens, ensuring that our agile and adaptable capabilities remain aligned to the wicked problems that matter most to our partners across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.

At the heart of our model is a simple but powerful idea: be a true partner with skin in the game. Our partners need effects, not just equipment. By owning the full stack – from the lab to the field – we are able to drive a continuous cycle of innovation that keeps our partners ahead. It's a fast-moving, intellectually demanding environment where talented people are given real responsibility, work on problems that matter, and contribute to an enterprise that is growing quickly and deliberately.

Headquartered in Washington, DC, with facilities across the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as Continental Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Group Overview

This role sits within the Digital and Synthetic Group (D&S). The D&S Group is committed to providing mission-driven information solutions that seamlessly bridge the digital and physical realms. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies and advanced platforms, we empower operational readiness and elevate situational awareness across diverse domains—including air, maritime, and space.

Position Summary

We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to provide leadership for our Mission System product as part of a Product-led cross-functional development team. Candidates should have solid knowledge and experience of best practices across the software development lifecycle, as well as excellent people management skills; they can be relied upon to build and maintain an engineering culture which is sustainably professional and positive, in which high-performing engineers can grow and thrive.

Metrea is a people-first organisation and candidates should have strong communication skills and the desire to proactively elevate their team through continuous knowledge sharing, collaboration, feedback, and mentorship.

What You'll Do

• Leading and coaching a team of highly talented engineers, taking responsibility for both their career and personal development.

• Conducting regular catch-ups and check-ins with the team to help to support their day-to-day engineering activities.
• Foster psychological safety, trust, accountability, and ownership within the development team.
• Supporting product management and the technical leadership in refining requirements and shaping the deliverables the team will work on.
• Track progress, surface risks early and drive mitigation actions. Actively remove blockers, dependencies and organisational frictions that slow the team down.
• Helping to align team efforts with the broader strategic goals of the organisation, helping to plan for future resource requirements and technology adoption.
• Developing and maintaining a deep relationship with the team’s Tech Lead and Product Manager to ensure alignment and support delivery.
• Collaborate with other engineering leaders, across the business, to improve engineering processes, code quality, release management and documentation.
• Supporting the recruitment process and taking responsibility for onboarding and integrating new teammates.

What You Bring

• We are looking for someone with experience leading software development teams in fast-growing companies where you play a part in shaping ways of working rather than follow pre-defined ones.

• Experience in engineering management having previously mentored and helped to develop the careers of software engineers
• Experience in employing agile methodologies in software development processes whilst working in a matrix organisation to help support the team establish and develop their ways of working.
• A deep passion for personal development with a drive to be constantly learning and furthering your professional knowledge.
• Strong organisational skills with an ability to work independently whilst planning, prioritising and managing your workload.
• Great interpersonal skills, a servant-leadership mindset and the ability to confidently communicate with others, conveying technical content clearly and articulately to non-technical team members.
• A background or interest in the development of geospatial data processing and visualisation software would be beneficial but not mandatory. You won’t be writing code yourself, but it’s important that you understand the underlying purpose of our solutions and the typical challenges they will encounter, so you can effectively support and guide your team.

Benefits

Private Medical Insurance

Subsided gym membership / plans through Wellhub

Electric Car scheme

Cycle to work scheme

Salary sacrificed pension scheme

Free lunch on office days

Enhanced Parental Leave

30 days annual PTO plus b/h

Bonus Scheme

Personal development opportunities

Work Authorization / Security Clearance

Employee must be a UK citizen

Employee must be able to have and maintain a SC Clearance as a minimum.

AAP/EEO Statement

Metrea Mission Data Limited (MMD) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or other characteristics protected by law.

Position Type and Expected Hours of Work

This is a full-time non-exempt position with typical working hours of Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Hours and work shifts may change in accordance with department and business needs.

Work Environment

This job operates in an office setting with hybrid working arrangements of 3 days per week from the office.

Travel

This role will require regular travel to Metrea’s Harwell - UK office and occasional travel to other Metrea UK offices.

Our Firmware

At Metrea, our single core value is Rooted in Humility, and our four cornerstone attributes are Entrepreneurial, Systematic, Discerning, and Over-Deliver. These form what we call our Teammate Firmware. Just like technical firmware connects software and hardware, our Firmware is the constant interface between our mission and our people. It defines how we show up, how we work together, and how we solve complex problems.

Our team Firmware creates a web-like, hyper-collaborative, dynamically hierarchical way of working that helps us adapt quickly, communicate openly, and distribute decision-making to where expertise actually lives. It enables groups to self-organize around hard problems, shift fluidly as priorities evolve, and operate with the trust, curiosity, and discipline required in a complex mission space. This foundation allows us to deliver elegant, effective solutions and uphold our purpose: protecting our precious inheritance.