Engineering Operations Manager

Location: Portugal (we have offices in Lisbon and Porto)

Department: Engineering

Hours: Full-time

Location: Remote-first

About YLD:

Everything we do is to empower our clients to move forward. Our purpose is to help our clients develop the capabilities they need to outperform their competitors. Our success is a consequence of ensuring our clients are successful. Our company is built on extraordinary people; we aim to attract, inspire, develop and retain them. YLD is a software engineering and design consultancy; we create digital capabilities for our clients that last beyond our engagement. We have offices in London, Lisbon, Porto.

About the role:

The Engineering Operations Manager is a new role for YLD. The key to the role is shaping and delivering an engineering operations strategy, playing a critical role in supporting the Head of Engineering and ensuring the smooth operation of our engineering function. It includes taking responsibility for optimising processes, supporting line managers, manage resource allocations, set recruitment criteria and methods, keep documentation initiatives alive, and ensure alignment across service lines (e.g., Data, Infrastructure, Fullstack Web...) to enable the delivery of exceptional technical solutions.

This role is non-billable, allowing you to dedicate your focus to improving workflows, supporting team operations, and contributing to the long-term success of YLD’s engineering organisation.

About you:

You are passionate about engineering, but above all, you care about the human side of it.

You understand that software delivery at scale requires processes, coordination, and documentation.

We are looking for someone confident, outgoing, and has a natural ability to get on well with colleagues

Your key responsibilities will be:

Optimise engineering operations

Oversee and refine workflows, ensuring smooth collaboration across service lines and project teams;
Manage resource allocation and capacity planning in alignment with project and business needs;
Develop and maintain tools like a skills matrix and reporting dashboards to track performance and optimise team utilization;
Drive process improvements and create comprehensive documentation for workflows, best practices, and operational guidelines.

Support team growth and development

Collaborate with line managers to streamline appraisals and support career development processes;
Define and implement career and learning tracks, ensuring team members have clear paths for growth;
Coordinate bench support, engaging engineers in learning opportunities or internal projects during downtime.

Lead recruitment and onboarding

Partner with the Talent team, Head of Engineering and Client Services, to plan and execute recruitment strategies and sourcing criteria — to maximise the match between the work ahead and the profiles;
Develop interview frameworks, workflows, exercises, role descriptions, and onboarding plans to attract and integrate top talent;
Ensure alignment between all different interviewers in both strategy and criteria;
Track recruitment progress and ensure efficient scaling of the team to meet business demands;

Foster collaboration across departments

Act as a liaison between engineering, design, client services, and other teams to improve communication and resolve dependencies;
Support cross-functional alignment to maintain consistent delivery standards and quality;
Drive and collaborate on documenting the work done on each client and project —for marketing, sales, and internal institutional knowledge;
Collaborate with Marketing to help curate engineering events and meetups;
Be involved in the sales processes, both as a guide for proposals, but also help to curate or orchestrate some Proofs-of-Concept.

Drive strategic initiatives

Support the Head of Engineering on long-term strategic projects, including scaling teams and adopting new tools;
Proactively identify opportunities to enhance team productivity and improve engineering workflows.

You’ll have the following skills and experience:

Proven experience in engineering operations, project management, or a similar role within a technical organisation;
Strong organisational and problem-solving skills, with a focus on process improvement and operational excellence;
Experience working in a fast-paced, client-focused environment;
Familiarity with software engineering processes, tools, and frameworks, with a strong foundation in software development best practices;
Ideally, a background in software engineering, enabling effective collaboration with technical leaders and an in-depth understanding of their operational needs;
Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across teams and leadership levels;
Experience supporting distributed teams and fostering collaboration across geographies.

As well as the chance to work with a forward-thinking, ethical, and fun group of people, you’ll also get:

Company Private Health care
Enhanced fully paid maternity and paternity leave for up to 6 months
25 days annual holiday (excluding Public Holidays)
€2000 annual allowance for Training/Conferences
€300 annual allowance for additional hardware
Mental Health support: access to Spill app
Meditation/Sleep support: Headspace or Calm app subscription
Bonus (depending on Company performance and results)
Company laptop
Generous referral schemes

Our typical Recruitment Process looks like this:

1st Interview with someone from the Talent team (30/45 mins)
2nd Interview with our Head of Engineering (~1h)
3rd Interview with our Chief Client Office and Head of Client Services (~30 mins)

We live and breathe our values, and know you will too:

Growing every day
Including everyone
Relationships built on honesty and ethics
Inspiring solutions
Winning together

We’re an equal-opportunity employer and value diversity of all kinds. We don’t discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, age, marital status, or disability status. We also offer a remote-first working environment, meaning that flexible working and work-life balance come as standard for all employees.

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