Cloud Engineering Manager

Role: Cloud Engineering Manager

Reporting Into: Nitin Mehtani

Location : Port Sunlight

Work Level: 2A

About the Role

Cloud is a critical enabler of Unilever’s digital future. It not only changes how we store and access data but, will also fundamentally improve how our business operates. Cloud enables innovation and delivery at cost effective scale and at pace by removing barriers and providing foundations for digital business transformation. The Cloud Platform Services (CPS) team, part of the UniOps function, has a vision to accelerate cloud adoption to drive a future fit model for innovation and growth across Unilever. The Cloud Engineering Manager is experienced in cloud-based tech, with a firm grasp of emerging technologies, platforms, and applications, and the ability to customize them to help our business become more secure and efficient. Extensive knowledge of cloud operations, experience managing staff, and advanced industry knowledge is key to keeping us at the cutting edge. The Cloud Engineering Manager is responsible for providing staffing and management of engineering resources assigned to Product Groups. This role is responsible for providing technical leadership and oversight across all cloud engineering activities. Responsibilities include the day to day and long-term career management of cloud engineers, including ensuring deliverables are met, cloud technical training, experience and understanding is kept up to date and relevant to meet Unilever’s wider Cloud strategy needs. The role also includes the need for a deep understanding and scoping of technical deliverable time frames and the management of expectations for key stakeholders. The role is also responsible for career management, coaching/mentoring, cloud technology leadership and service readiness of the team, ensuring that everyone has a career development plan mapping to CPS’s annual goals

Main Accountabilities

Cloud Technical Leadership – As a Cloud Engineering Manager you will be expected to have a wide range of experience and knowledge in Public Cloud, with the need to be a subject matter expert in a specific Cloud domain or technology. Your experience and expertise will be drawn upon as a technical leader as you provide direction to the engineering team on engagements. • Cloud Expertise – You will be responsible for providing advice and guidance to teams across CPS and seen as a cloud technical leader across the group. This will not be confined to the immediate Cloud expert community, and you will be expected to talk competently to the wider Unilever organisation about cloud and the capabilities it offers to the business. • Technical Resourcing Management – One of the main responsibilities and accountabilities of the role is the assigning and management of technical expertise aligned with product group roadmaps and backlog. Including overcoming technical resource constraints, reallocation of resources and technical resource forecasting. • Technical Sounding Board – You will be expected to offer experience and expertise to your team and the wider Cloud community to find technical ways forward in resolving issues. • Key Contributor in developing the overall Cloud Engineering objectives and deliverables and working to achieve these goals in creative and effective ways. • Exercises Independent Judgment a key responsibility of this role is to decide the level of effort and time a deliverable may take a cloud engineering resource to perform and setting those expectations with stakeholders. • Identifies technical opportunities you will be expected to identify efficiencies and opportunities outside the immediate area of a product and act accordingly to ensure these opportunities are explored or taken up. • Stakeholder Management – you will need to guide and influence technical and customer stakeholder relationships; and be comfortable delivering constructive feedback and providing options and solutions to move forward. • Adept at strategic planning Key to this role is planning and the use of critical thinking, analytics of data and dates to assist with forecasting work efficiently to avoid delays. • Technical Mentorship you will be expected to guide and mentor a cloud engineering team, ensuring individual accountability is maintained to achieve goals, owning initiatives and driving deliverables to completion. • Collaboration – you will be working with the Architecture and Engineering Lead to forecast resources and skills needed for upcoming engagements, as defined by the product roadmaps and backlogs. Actively providing feedback from the discipline about ongoing engagements with a view to improving products and offerings. • Community Development – driving a spirit of technical collaboration and cross pollination of skills and experience

Key Skills and Relevant Experience

Skills:

• Decision Making - Strong and confident decision maker, adept at making decisions sometimes with limited information at your disposal. Ability to negotiate, be diplomatic, and stand your ground when required.

• Multi-Tasking – ability to prioritise and manage multiple tasks and engagements effectively and efficiently.

• Talent Development – able to hire, retain and develop cloud engineering staff. Attracting and developing key contributors. Maintain goals for direct reports and identifies key areas for development.

• Servant Leader – driving a culture that allows their staff to try and fail, but also assists with the unblocking of issues so their team can deliver at pace and without constant approval.

• Communication - Writes and speaks in a professional, convincing and persuasive way. Ability to communicate with engineers at a technical level as well as communicate at a Director level or higher as appropriate.

• Delegating - Confident and effective at delegating and uses delegation to enhance the team's productivity, deliver on goals and provide development opportunities.

• Deep Understanding of Cloud Concepts and excellent knowledge of how these concepts can deliver business value, and realising those values in the most efficient manner

• Educating & Guiding others in their Cloud maturity journey, explaining the benefits of cloud to non-technical people.

• Knowledge Management - Contributor and curator of knowledge-based content and reusable assets or best practice materials that can be used across a magnitude of projects.

• Influencing & Advising - other teams, peers and leaders in seeing your way of thinking, situation or perspective and negotiating to a successful outcome or resolution.

• Mentoring – able to act as a role model to your team, providing developmental plans and career paths within Cloud Engineering to ensure job satisfaction and progression.

• Exceptional problem-solving skills, with the ability to see and solve issues before they affect business productivity.

Experience

• 4+ years of experience, developing, and implementing cloud solutions on Azure and GCP platforms.

• 2+ years of experience in managing cloud engineering resources or developers across one or more projects.

• Proven ability to collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams of Product Managers, Architects, Scrum Masters and Subject Matter Experts.

• 2+ years practical experience in applying Agile and/or DevOps methodologies.

• Keeping ahead with cloud trends and aligning appropriate cloud-native solutions to a product strategy.

• Coding - Proficiency with most provider specific languages and a understanding of how long a task or deliverable should take in that chosen coding language. Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 3+ Associate level Cloud Service Provider certificates in GCP and/or Azure.

BEHAVIOURS

Candidates would be required to show demonstration of the following behaviours:

• Accountability and Ownership - Strive for high quality and success, empower yourself and others to make decisions.

• Be bold - Challenge the status quo, be bold & passionate about cloud, think outside of the box and be willing to improve.

• Customer First - Thinking about our customers constantly by providing them with the best tools, services and end user experiences. • Collaboration - Working in an openly creative culture, where all ideas are acknowledged encouraging innovation and transparency.

• Empowered - Always be one step ahead, embrace change and challenges, initiate solutions and make decisions in good faith.