Head of Engineering

System Crew•Tampa, FL

1d•Remote

About The Position

The Group Head of Engineering leads System Crew’s engineering function, including in-house engineers and specialist contractors who deliver projects, operate client environments and staff the service desk across locations spanning seven hours of time difference. The role is responsible for planning, delegating, delivering and documenting engineering work, and raising the technical standard of the team. It will build a scalable engineering organisation with clear ownership, timely delivery, and routine use of AI and automation. The position reports to the Group Managing Director and works closely with sales and pre-sales on solution design and bids. The role combines engineering leadership and service delivery with technical authority, client and partner engagement, and responsibility for engineering standards and management-system audits. It is full-time, permanent and remote, with regular travel. The position is based in the United Kingdom, Florida, North Carolina or South Carolina.

Requirements

At least 10 years of experience in IT infrastructure and systems engineering, including substantial time at a managed service provider or in a complex multi-site environment.
A track record of leading engineering teams across countries and time zones and delivering projects on time through delegation rather than doing the work personally.
Deep expertise in the Microsoft platform, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune and Windows Server.
Current Microsoft role-based certifications at Associate level or above.
Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification is expected within the first year if not already held.
Broad, vendor-neutral command of infrastructure including virtualisation, backup and recovery, virtual desktops, identity and endpoint security.
Working knowledge of networking.
Regular, practical use of AI tools in engineering work.
Full professional fluency in written and spoken English.
Residence in the United Kingdom, Florida, North Carolina or South Carolina, with existing right to work there.

Nice To Haves

15 years or more of experience.
Spanish language skills.
Experience in regulated environments, especially financial services.
Experience with IT separations (carve-outs) and data centre or cloud migrations.
Experience working within ITIL practice and ISO/IEC 27001 or ISO 9001 management systems.
Further certifications in cloud, virtualisation, backup or security from any major vendor.

Responsibilities

Lead, organise and develop the engineering team across all locations, establishing clear ownership, delegation and accountability for projects and client environments.
Plan resourcing and workload to deliver projects and client commitments on time, and report progress, risks and slippage early and honestly.
Establish a working rhythm for a distributed team, including clean time-zone handovers, written documentation, regular one-to-ones and team reviews.
Hire, onboard and develop engineers in several countries, manage performance and build a layer of team leads who can run work without constant escalation.
Travel to team locations and client sites as needed, including the United States, Costa Rica, Brazil, the British Virgin Islands, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland.
Set and enforce engineering standards for reference architectures, builds, change and release management, patching, backup and recovery testing, and security baselines.
Serve as the senior technical authority and final escalation point for complex incidents and designs.
Lead technical delivery of transformation projects, including IT separations, data centre and cloud migrations, and new-site build-outs.
Own service quality against SLAs for the service desk and managed services.
Own the engineering side of the group’s management systems and their audits, currently ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001.
Use AI assistants and agents daily for scripting, automation, documentation, troubleshooting and analysis, and make this normal practice for the team.
Replace repetitive manual work with automation and measure the effect on delivery time and margin.
Set AI-use rules that protect client data and comply with ISO/IEC 27001 and client contracts.
Own the technical side of vendor partnerships, including the certification plan for Microsoft Solutions Partner designations and other vendor programmes.
Support pre-sales and tender work with solution designs, effort estimates and technical responses.
Serve as senior technical contact for key clients, including regulated financial services firms and public-sector bodies.
Keep engineering effort within budget and contribute to service pricing and margins.