ENGINEERING MANAGER

Bullfinch Recruitment are proud to be partnering with a high-growth social gaming business, delivering innovative, scalable products to a global player base, who are looking for an Engineering Manager to join their team. Our client Our client is a fast-scaling product development company headquartered in Gibraltar, with a dynamic, global team powering our growth. They operate at the intersection of technology and entertainment, building innovative solutions that shape the future of social gaming and deliver outstanding experiences to millions of players worldwide. They’re driven by speed, ambition, and bold ideas. At their core, they’re product creators and problem-solvers who thrive in a high-performance environment. They’re looking for exceptional talent- smart, adaptable, and motivated individuals eager to make an impact, scale business functions at pace, and continuously improve. Whether you're a domain expert or an agile thinker who thrives in change, with our client, you'll have the freedom to innovate, take ownership, and help us lead the next wave of gaming innovation. The Role Lead engineering teams that build and scale our real-time gaming platform while taking ownership of delivery outcomes and team performance. AI-Driven Engineering Culture: They are actively building an AI-driven engineering organisation with a clear and deliberate stance: artificial intelligence is a core part of how they build and deliver software — not an experiment, not a trend, and not an optional add-on. AI is embedded into their engineering workflows, from system design and prototyping to refactoring, testing, and code review. They expect engineers to be fully comfortable working in AI-driven environments and to treat AI as a primary productivity multiplier. Strong engineering judgment, architectural ownership, and accountability remain essential—AI amplifies their engineers, it doesn’t replace responsibility for technical decisions. What you will be doing • Own delivery outcomes — ensure your cross-functional teams deliver reliable systems and meet commitments by coordinating priorities and execution • Manage and develop people — including performance reviews, career development, and handling performance concerns when needed • Maintain strong engineering standards — ensure teams follow established architecture patterns and quality standards while navigating complex technical trade-offs • Enable effective team execution — work with Team Leads and Product Managers to ensure initiatives are clearly defined and teams can execute smoothly • Improve engineering effectiveness — continuously refine how teams plan, coordinate, and deliver work as the organisation scales • Support system reliability — help teams investigate incidents, understand root causes, and strengthen platform reliability What they are looking for • Strong engineering background with extensive software development experience and deep backend expertise (Java ecosystem) • System design experience building and operating high-load systems using modern backend technologies, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native infrastructure • Proven track record leading engineering teams and delivering complex production systems while balancing technical leadership and people management • Experience operating production systems and participating in incident response and post-incident improvements • Strong product sense — ability to assess product initiatives and identify engineering implications, risks, and missing elements • Strong delivery ownership with ability to produce realistic estimates, align stakeholders, and communicate scope options and trade-offs clearly Nice to have: • Experience in iGaming or other high-load, real-time platforms • Experience transitioning from a senior IC role (e.g., Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Solution Architect) into leadership • Familiarity with Java, Kafka, Kubernetes, or GCP • Experience working in product companies or scale-ups Their Tech Stack • Java 25 • Spring Boot 4 • Google Cloud Platform: • Kubernetes • Kafka • AlloyDB for PostgreSQL • Ebean ORM • Flyway • Redis/Memcached • Retool • Jenkins/ArgoCD • ELK/Sentry/Grafana • Jira/Confluence/Slack/Bitbucket Why you will love it You’ll have the freedom to shape engineering practices in a fast-growing environment where your technical expertise directly impacts millions of players worldwide. Work with a modern tech stack, minimal bureaucracy, and highly skilled engineers who value pragmatic execution over process for its own sake. Lead teams that take real ownership of their systems while building something meaningful in the global gaming space. They hire based on skills, drive, and ideas—nothing else. Your background, gender, age, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, neurodiversity, or educational path will never be a barrier to joining us. They also welcome candidates from non-traditional career journeys and value diverse perspectives that challenge conventional thinking. Diversity fuels their innovation, collaboration, and growth, and they’re committed to creating an environment where everyone can contribute their best work and thrive.