Deputy Engineering Manager (Hands on) - Electronics - Up to £85k

Purpose & Background

Avire is seeking a highly committed and dedicated Deputy Engineering Manager to join our small, high impact R&D team. You will be leading the development of emergency communication products that keep millions of people around the world safe, every single day. Leading a small, multi-disciplinary team, you will be working within a highly collaborative international environment with colleagues across our Maidenhead, Barcelona (Spain) and Sussex (Wisconsin, US) sites.

As part of the engineering leadership team of Avire, you will play a pivotal role in nurturing the engineering capability we need to deliver outstanding products that delight our customers. You will play a key role in supporting the UK Engineering Manager in leading the department, and we will support you in developing into an Engineering Manager role within Avire, or the wider Halma group, in the future.

We are at the forefront of development of emergency communications systems and other safety-of-life products for the building services industry, with a particular focus on high-rise buildings. Your work will be critical to ensuring that building occupants, particularly less mobile occupants, and those with disabilities, are protected and able to communicate in the event of emergencies such as high-rise building fires.

This is a hands-on engineering role with responsibility for leading a small team of multi-disciplinary (primarily electronic) engineers. We are seeking a candidate who can grow into leading our UK Engineering department over the course of 2-4 years.

We recognise that everyone’s engineering story is a little different, and so we welcome applications from candidates who may have followed a non-traditional career path, or taken a career break, for any reason.

What will you be doing?

• Developing products across the whole lifecycle of electronics, both hardware and firmware. Approximately 20% of our development work is hardware focused, with 80% focused on embedded software.
• Conducting and directing the development of embedded firmware in C and Python on a variety of microcontrollers including Raspberry Pi, STM32 and PIC.
• Leading the design of our products throughout the lifecycle, from requirements specification through to architectural definition, high and low-level design, verification, qualification, and launch.
• Creating and improving formal processes for product development that meet regulatory requirements.
• Conducting and directing technology investigations into new hardware candidates (e.g., ESP32, Jetson Nano) and software languages (e.g., Rust, Spark) for future applications.
• Working with the supply chain to ensure components and any subcontract designs meet requirements.
• Ensuring that products are designed for manufacture and supporting productionisation efforts.
• Supporting investigation of non-conformances and other quality issues.
• Managing and coordinating engineering change and ensuring that a detailed design record is maintained.
• Coaching, mentoring, and developing the engineering team and fostering a culture of collaboration and curiosity, in particular enhancing the team’s efforts to understand the customers’ jobs to be done and pain points.
• Establishing yourself as a thought leader and industry expert through participation in regulatory committees, speaking at conferences, authoring papers, presenting at trade shows, etc.
• Working in cooperation with the rest of the engineering management team to plan the headcount and skills needed within each team to deliver the product roadmaps.

What type of person are you?

• You have an outstanding track record of delivering projects on-schedule and to-budget.
• You are highly analytical and take an evidence-based approach to your work.
• You enjoy building outstanding interpersonal relationships across teams and working cross-functionally.
• You always act with honesty and integrity and are willing to deliver difficult messages and hold tough conversations with a wide range of stakeholders.
• You have led, coached, and supported the development of engineers from a diverse range of backgrounds.
• You are curious about different parts of the business and ways of working, and always seeking to improve upon the status quo.
• You are passionate about delighting customers.
• You set high standards for yourself and others in the pursuit of excellence.
• You believe the culture of an organization is fundamental to its success.
• You want to grow professionally with an organization that values diverse thought.

Qualifications & Experience

• Degree qualified in a relevant engineering discipline or have equivalent experience.
• Substantial experience of developing embedded firmware in C or Rust, ideally within a safety critical or high integrity environment.
• Substantial experience in the whole lifecycle of electronic design, from requirements specification, software/hardware architectural design and high/low-level development through to qualification, support to manufacture and product launch.
• Experience managing a team of engineers.
• (Desirable) Chartered Engineer (CEng) or international equivalent (Eur Ing, PE), or have sufficient engineering competence to gain CEng status upon appointment.

Flexible and Remote Working

Generally, the engineering team are in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Alternative working patterns may be possible, but please be aware this role is not suitable for full-time remote work. Please talk to us about your needs during the initial interview.

Who is AVIRE?

AVIRE combines 4 market-leading brands (Microkey, Janus, Memco and Rath) delivering emergency communications products that keep millions of people around the world safe, every single day. Each brand has a strong market presence, a unique identity, a distinct product range, and a long, successful history, dating back as far as 1971. The group has manufacturing locations in 3 countries, R&D centres in 2 countries and sales & marketing offices in 6 countries as well approximately 500 employees globally.

Avire is part of the Halma group (www.halma.com). Halma offers very high levels of autonomy to its operating companies, while providing support when needed, with a particular focus on talent development and investment in people.