2 min to read Sorted
Software Development Manager at Sorted
As the Software Development Manager at Sorted, I was responsible for leading multiple teams in developing carrier integrations and middleware solutions. 💻 I directed a team of 16 developers and 5 testers, including 1 internal team and 3 outsourced teams with a partner. 🤝 Additionally, I oversaw 4 other teams with a second partner to transform our tech stack and support integrations for a new tier 1 client.
Collaborating with the Director of Engineering, I worked to develop and implement the carrier integration development strategy. 🤝 Together with other tech team managers, we worked on departmental problems and improvements, including transitioning to DevOps practices. We moved our code from VMs hosting web and Windows services to cloud-native microservices on Kubernetes/AKS with Linux Docker containers and serverless functions hosted in Azure.
Working with product owners, delivery managers, and client-facing teams, I ensured our software solutions met customer needs and platform requirements. 👥 I aligned with the Carrier Management team to liaise with integrating carriers, ensuring we had a great partnership, and what we built worked with the platform, delivered excellent quality for our mutual customers, and was built efficiently with minimal waste and rework.
I facilitated interactions between dev teams, solutions architects, and analysts to build a playbook and encourage autonomy for the teams, who were accountable for their software deliveries. 🤝 To promote continual improvement, I also orchestrated retrospectives and blameless post-mortems.
Throughout my tenure, I coached offshore teams to take ownership of their work and increased their accountability from prioritization through the SDLC. 🚀 Additionally, I managed and promoted a backlog of technical improvements to supporting infrastructure for carrier integrations. I also found new ways to assess root cause failures and coached teams to learn from mistakes while encouraging a culture of blameless reflection and continuous improvement.
Working with the new Head of Architecture, I established a guild to improve our architectural principles. I also worked towards business-wide goals around people development and retention, rolled out our new Progression and Performance frameworks with the People Team, and defined levels and clear behavioral and SMART goal examples. I coordinated a new interview process for recruitment of developers and built-in ways to remove unconscious bias from the initial tech test kata we asked candidates to complete. 🎓
In terms of team achievements, I changed workflows and processes to work effectively and safely as fully remote teams during the extended lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Despite the challenges, we delivered key projects during an unprecedentedly busy time for Sorted as customers worldwide switched to buying retail goods online in greater numbers while simultaneously preparing for integrations changing due to Britain leaving the EU. 🙌 All teams embraced intent-based leadership and “3 Amigos as a Principle” to coaching each other towards team goals, owning development approach and related challenges together, and removing the requirement for individual and management heroics to deliver complex work through the SDLC all the way to the live environment.
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