AddressTeam Manager, Research & Edge Computing
Salary: £85-95k plus benefits
Hybrid remote: ~1-2 days per week in our office in Old Street, London
Reporting to: Shaun Howell, our Head of Research
About Us
At VivaCity, we help cities solve their biggest transport challenges. Our work saves lives by giving councils the road safety data they need to make targeted and effective improvements. We reduce congestion by making traffic lights more intelligent, and we use actionable insights to empower cities to make the right choices around sustainability.
To do this, we create cutting-edge products using machine learning, including sensors with on-board video AI capabilities, data visualisation dashboards and APIs, and city-wide control and optimisation algorithms. We’re now present in 100+ cities across the UK, US, and Australia, with many thousands of sensors producing billions of data points a year.
We are looking for an experienced Team Manager to lead our largest technical team, responsible for our product’s core AI and algorithms, which is central to the company’s expansion into new markets and products. If you want to use your deep technical management experience to save lives alongside an exceptional team, we’d love to hear from you!
The Role
As our Research & Edge Computing Team Manager, you will be responsible for the largest technical team at Vivacity: a 6-person team which owns our core computer vision capabilities and road safety data algorithms. You will lean on your experience to effectively plan and deliver the team’s roadmap and technology, whilst nurturing your team members, as well as iterating team processes and instilling high-performance methodologies. You’ll report to the Head of Research, and will work closely with our Product and Delivery teams. Your split of time between duties will vary, but will approximately be:
- Team management (eg strategy & roadmap input, sprint ceremonies, reporting, OKRs, owning workstreams, project managing) - 45%
- Line management (pastoral, 1-1s, coaching, reviews etc) - 10%
- Tech management (design, architecting, problem solving) - 30%
- Direct technical contribution (implementing, reviewing, etc) - 15%
Your day-to-day work will include several key components:
- Collaborating with leadership to develop and implement team vision and strategies
- Manage timelines, stakeholder expectations, and team alignment, ensuring clear technical plans and communication, whilst ensuring focus on customer outcomes
- Balancing innovation, rapid prototyping, feature delivery, and scalability improvements, while effectively managing both engineers and researchers
As an experienced builder of high-profile teams:
- Building a high performance team culture which enshrines Vivacity’s values and empowers your team to bring their full self and energy to their work
- Applying your experience as well as performance metrics to prioritise and implement process and tooling improvements
- Proactively address bottlenecks and empower team members, while maintaining accountability through performance monitoring and mitigation strategies
As an experienced line manager
- Providing a constant source of energy for the team, emphasising each person’s impact, whilst proactively ensuring psychological safety in the team
- Using a coaching management style to help your team members continuously grow in their roles, proactively looking for opportunities for them to develop their skills
- Representing your team within the business and championing their voice, as well as inputting on department initiatives such as career pathways
In your first 90 days in the role, your tasks will include:
- Get up to speed on the business context for your team and products
- Update your team’s roadmap to cover the next 3-6 months based on commercial priorities and your experience
- Develop Objectives and Key Results, aligned with this roadmap
- Work closely with product to develop release plans for the items on your roadmap, including quality assurance testing steps
- Leading refinement meetings: guiding the scoping and design of technical work items from a lens of commercial focus and urgency
- Working closely with workstream owners to manage the day to day of product delivery, for example through critical path planning, stakeholder updates, and technical alignment alongside specialists
- Integrating deeply into your team’s day-to-day and contributing positively to team culture through thoughtful and frequent communication
- Build close line manager relationships with your reports through regular 1-1s, office attendance and ad-hoc meetings
- Work with leadership to input on a career framework being developed
- Work with your reports to develop personal development plans, aligned with this framework
- Use your experience and business context to proactively shape the way the team operates
- Unblocking team members through technical input and contributing towards key tasks where time permits
About you
- Demonstrated leadership in managing high-performing technical teams, solving customer problems efficiently with creativity and drive
- Significant technical expertise in relevant areas (eg golang/python, kubernetes, terraform, postgresql, computer vision, AI/ML)
- Experience within an innovative deep tech startup or scaleup; you feel at home with the complex and competing priorities of R&D work towards new technical products
- A track record of setting successful technical visions and roadmaps
- Proven experience of nurturing and developing team members, whilst representing their voice to the company
- The ability to move seamlessly from team road mapping to detailed task management and unblocking team members on technical tasks
- Demonstrated experience of measuring outcomes and executing initiatives which reduce friction in development and improve developer experience
- Strong customer-outcome-centric approach, able to bring the business context to your day-to-day technical planning and delivery, and infusing this into all interactions with the team
- Self-motivated and energetic leader; you enjoy being your team’s cheerleader and bring passion, energy and empathy to everything you do
The following would further strengthen any application:
- A passion for transport, sustainability, and the built environment
- Hands-on experience with AI or computer vision technologies
- Hands-on experience with DevOps toolchains
- More substantial experience as a developer or researcher
Interview Process
- Initial discussion and CV review by Vivacity’s People team
- Initial interview with Shaun Howell, Head of Research
- Debugging & problem solving interview: 1 hour: you will be presented with problems of increasing complexity, and be asked to resolve issues, as though a team member has come to you with the problem. Topics may include software engineering and ML
- Final round: 2 hours of interviews split into 30 minute technical, 1 hour management skills, 30 minute CEO interview
What we offer:
- 25 days of holiday.
- Flexible working hours and work-from-home options.
- Up to 30 days per year of remote work.
- 3% employer pension contribution.
- £200 total working-from-home budget.
- £850 per year learning and development budget.
- Enhanced parental leave.
- Up to 3 'childcare' or 'dependant' days per year.
- Mental health support through Spill.
- Discounted gym memberships through GymFlex.
- £50 per person per quarter team social budget.
- Additional entertainment budget and company parties.
- Office food and drinks.
- Optional Bupa healthcare and dental care through salary deduction.
- Eye care vouchers.
- Seasonal flu jabs.
- Cycle to work scheme.
- Payroll giving through salary sacrifice
Vivacity welcomes applications from all candidates and embraces diversity within our teams. If you are in any doubt as to whether you would be a good fit, please get in touch, or apply anyway and we will get back to you. We look forward to hearing from you!
