About the role

As Head of Engineering, Gaming & Player Engagement, you will drive the technical strategy and hold both technical and product ownership of the platform components that enable customer journeys throughout CRM, communications, loyalty and rewards, as well as the gaming products and integrations. Your primary responsibility will be to lead the development and evolution of your platform domain, ensuring alignment with the overall group strategy while meeting the business's needs.

This role extends beyond delivery and engineering management; it involves owning and steering the development within your domain. While heading a sizeable organisation across multiple locations, you are expected to stay technically involved in your domain, maintaining an understanding of the architectural depth, ensuring seamless integration, scalability and compliance. This role requires an understanding of aggregation patterns, as the platform integrates multiple third-party providers, and an ability to design for automation and autonomy across CRM systems. You will also ensure that customer operations and compliance workflows are automated and embedded into the technical fabric of the platform. This is a 360° ownership role where ultimate accountability rests with you, combining strategic leadership with the ability to dive deep into architectural decisions, data orchestration, and system design to ensure a cohesive, high-performing, and compliant player engagement ecosystem.

You will lead a team of Product Leads, empowering them to execute on both strategic and tactical initiatives. You will also lead technical managers who drive deliveries and oversee 7+ teams across multiple locations. In addition, you will manage UX leaders who will serve as your right hand in translating requests into customer journeys. In this role, you report to the Director of the Player Account Management Platform and will collaborate with Executives, Business Owners, Delivery Teams, and other Technology functions to align the platform's evolution with business goals.

Your leadership will be pivotal in safeguarding that the platform and technical products not only meets current requirements but is also future-proofed. Adapting to the evolving landscape of customer journeys, brands, and channels across the group. You will take full ownership of your part of the platform, not just the organization around it, and work closely with the Head of Architecture, Head of Operations and Head of Delivery to transform the landscape, maximizing our focus on delivering customer value.

What you will do

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Own and drive the technical product and platform strategy for your area, ensuring not only its alignment with broader OBG objectives but also its effective implementation and measurable impact.
• Maintain a deep technical understanding of the platform, ensuring all strategic decisions are grounded in strong engineering principles.
• Lead the development and maintenance of a comprehensive roadmap, ensuring the platform evolves sustainably and remains scalable across all customer journeys and channels.
• Set and monitor OKRs for your organisation, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, skill development, and knowledge sharing.
• Continuously evolve ways of working by staying up to date with industry trends, new technologies, and organizational transformation practices, leading change management initiatives across teams.

Team Leadership & Empowerment

• Manage your leadership team, providing direction, guidance on roadmap and technical strategy, and best practices while ensuring alignment with business priorities.
• Ensure accountability is clearly shared with Product Leads and Technical Leads, empowering them as joint owners of outcomes rather than delegates of tasks.
• Ensure that UX is successfully embedded in your business area, driving the product design vision through informed decision making based on user research, CX and analytics data.

Delivery Oversight & Execution

• Ensure the successful delivery of key strategic projects, balancing the need for timely execution with the overarching technical strategy and platform goals.
• Oversee the integration of data and ensure its availability across business domains, in line with architectural guidelines and the overall group automation strategy.
• Actively participate in architectural reviews and major technical design sessions to ensure engineering rigor and alignment with platform goals.

Stakeholder Engagement & Representation

• Act as the primary liaison between Technology and the business organisation, ensuring that their prioritized needs are met while aligning with the platform's strategic direction.
• Work closely to C-level executives and other stakeholders, and keeping them informed of major changes, challenges, and successes.
• Act as the visible representative of your area across the organization and to external stakeholders, providing at-a-glance insight into performance, priorities, and future direction.

Governance, Compliance & Risk Management

• Champion technical compliance and risk management, ensuring adherence to security, regulatory, and industry standards.

Budgeting & Resource Management

• Proactively manage the budget across delivery, travel, training, and team development, collaborating with other Heads to ensure fair and strategic allocation of resources.

We think that you

• Have extensive leadership and manager experience, preferably across multiple disciplines, with a successful track record of empowering these leaders to thrive and deliver results.
• Possess deep expertise in driving technical product strategy and platform ownership, with a strong ability to align technology roadmaps and product development to broader business goals and organizational strategy.
• Have a solid technical foundation, you can evaluate technical trade-offs, discuss architecture in depth, and guide engineers and architects through complex problems.
• Are skilled at balancing strategic vision with pragmatic decision-making, ensuring sustainable and scalable platform evolution that supports long-term growth and innovation.
• Have a strong background in overseeing complex product and engineering organizations, including multi-tier team structures with Product Owners, Designers, Team Leads, and Engineering teams.
• Demonstrate exceptional ability in cross-functional leadership, collaborating closely with architecture, operations, delivery, and business stakeholders to deliver cohesive and forward-thinking platform solutions.
• Possess excellent communication skills suited for engaging with C-level executives and senior stakeholders, able to clearly articulate technical strategies, risks, challenges, and successes.
• Have a strong track record championing technical compliance, security standards, and risk management across complex technology platforms.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, skill development, and collaborative knowledge sharing across all organizational levels, setting and tracking meaningful OKRs to drive performance and engagement.
• Are naturally proactive and results-oriented, with the ability to unblock challenges quickly and support your leaders and teams in delivering high-quality outcomes.