UK

United Kingdom · Technical roles · Director/VP Level (16-20 years)

Director of Engineering

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, a real day, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

  • Experience bandDirector/VP Level (16-20 years)
  • Direct reports3-8 reports
  • Reports toVP of Engineering or CTO
  • UK framework levelUsually a director, accountable for a division and its numbers

Also advertised as VP of Software Development · Head of Platform Engineering · Engineering Director

Built on an analysis of 43,079 real UK job descriptions · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

Start with a free Future Fluency check, tuned to Director of Engineering

Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this role rather than a generic one. About five minutes, and no card.

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1What this role really is

This role is about leading multiple engineering teams, typically across a significant product line or business unit. You're not just building software; you're building the capability to build software, shaping the technical strategy, and ensuring your teams deliver against broad business objectives. It's a strategic leadership position that balances technical vision with commercial reality.

2What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

GitHub/GitLab (Source Control & Repo Mgmt)Strategic

Setting enterprise-wide standards for source control, managing security and compliance features, evaluating platform choices.

GitHub Actions/Jenkins (CI/CD & Automation)Architect

Defining the organisation's overall DevOps strategy, selecting and integrating the toolchain, focusing on metrics like Cycle Time and Deployment Frequency.

AWS/Azure (Cloud Infrastructure)Strategic

Owning the cloud budget and strategy, making build vs. buy decisions, managing multi-cloud strategies, negotiating vendor contracts.

Jira/Confluence (Project & Knowledge Mgmt)Strategic

Optimising development processes across multiple teams, using Jira data to forecast delivery and identify bottlenecks, ensuring alignment between roadmaps and business goals.

Datadog/New Relic (Observability & Monitoring)Strategic

Defining the enterprise observability strategy, ensuring systems manage reliability and performance proactively, reporting on system uptime and incident response to leadership.

Anaplan/Workday Adaptive Planning (Financial & Strategic Planning)Advanced

Managing team and department budgets, building business cases for technology investments, presenting technical strategy in board-ready formats.

Diligent Boards (Board Reporting)Advanced

Preparing and presenting technical strategy, risks, and opportunities to the board and executive leadership.

3What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choiceComing inWhere you are nowThe step above
Technical Architecture for New ProductNo input.Propose technical solutions for specific components.Design the architecture for a significant service, get team buy-in.
Annual Departmental Budget AllocationNo input.Provide estimates for specific tasks/projects.Estimate costs for a workstream, identify potential savings.
Critical Production Incident ResponseFollow runbook, escalate immediately.Diagnose and fix issues within defined services.Lead incident response for a complex service, coordinate fix.

4How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, honestly: the hard targets, how often each one is actually looked at, and the quiet human signals that never make it onto a dashboard.

Deployment Frequency
How often our teams release code to production
Target · Weekly or more frequently for most services

Increased deployment frequency by 25% year-on-year across your business unit, meaning faster iteration and feedback.

Lead Time for Changes
The time it takes for a code change to go from commit to production
Target · < 1 week (ideally days)

Reduced average lead time from 10 days to 4 days, showing improved efficiency in the CI/CD pipeline.

Team Retention Rate
Percentage of engineers who stay with us in your business unit
Target · > 90% annually

Maintained a 92% retention rate, indicating a healthy and engaging work environment for your teams.

Cloud Cost Optimisation
Reduction in cloud infrastructure spend relative to business growth
Target · 10-15% reduction in spend per active user/transaction

Identified and implemented optimisations that saved £150K in cloud costs this financial year without impacting performance.

Programme Delivery Rate
Percentage of strategic technical programmes delivered within agreed scope, budget, and timeline
Target · > 85%

Successfully delivered 9 out of 10 major programmes this year, with the remaining one having clear, agreed adjustments.

Technical Strategy Clarity & Adoption
How well your technical vision is understood and put into practice by your teams
  • Engineering Managers can articulate the strategy, architectural decisions align with it, and it's referenced in design reviews.
Manager Development & Empowerment
The growth and autonomy of your direct reports
  • Managers are confidently making decisions, leading their teams effectively, and taking on more complex challenges
  • they're not constantly asking you for micro-decisions.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Influence
Your ability to get other departments on board with technical initiatives
  • Product, Sales, and Operations leaders actively seek your input on strategic planning, and there's clear, documented agreement on shared goals.
Architectural Health & Scalability
The overall robustness and future-readiness of the systems under your remit
  • Regular architectural reviews identify fewer critical issues, systems handle increased load without major incidents, and technical debt is actively managed.
Incident Response & Post-Mortem Quality
How effectively your teams respond to and learn from production issues
  • Incidents are resolved quickly, post-mortems are blameless and lead to clear, actionable improvements, and repeat issues are rare.

5Would you like it

The honest version. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy
Building High-Performing Teams

You get a real buzz from seeing your managers and their teams grow, deliver great software, and solve tough problems together. You'll actively coach, mentor, and remove blockers for them.

Spending an afternoon helping an Engineering Manager refine their team's Q3 objectives, seeing them present it confidently, and then watching their team smash those goals.

Shaping Technical Strategy

You love the challenge of taking a vague business goal and turning it into a concrete, multi-year technical roadmap. You're energised by architectural discussions and making decisions that impact the future of our products.

Leading an architectural review for a new product line, challenging assumptions, and ultimately guiding the team to a scalable, maintainable design that everyone buys into.

Driving Business Impact Through Technology

It's not just about shipping code; it's about seeing that code directly contribute to revenue, cost savings, or a better customer experience. You'll connect engineering efforts directly to the company's bottom line.

Presenting to the executive team how a specific engineering initiative reduced customer churn by 5% or opened up a new market segment.

What frustrates people
  • The constant tension between Product's desire for new features and Engineering's need to address technical debt and improve reliability.
  • Dealing with legacy systems that are difficult to change but critical to the business.
  • The relentless pressure to hire and retain top engineering talent in a super competitive market.
  • Having to translate complex technical challenges into simple, business-friendly language for executives who might not grasp the nuances.
  • The sheer volume of context switching—from budget reviews to architectural decisions to personnel issues, all in one day.
  • The occasional 3 AM pager alert for a critical production incident, even when you're managing managers.
What this role does not give you
  • Daily hands-on coding (you'll mostly be reviewing, guiding, and strategising).
  • A quiet, uninterrupted environment for deep work (expect constant interruptions and meetings).
  • The ability to avoid difficult conversations about performance or strategy.
  • A clear, linear path where every problem has an obvious technical solution.

6Who you work with

This role directly shapes the technical capabilities and delivery capacity of a significant part of the business. Your decisions on architecture, team structure, and process improvements directly impact our ability to innovate, scale, and maintain a competitive edge. You're essentially the architect of a major part of our technical future.

Inside the business
  • VP of Product (for product strategy and roadmap alignment)
  • Head of Operations (for system reliability and deployment processes)
  • CFO and Finance leadership (for budget planning and cost optimisation)
  • Head of HR (for talent acquisition, retention, and people development)
  • Other Director-level peers (for cross-functional programme coordination)
Outside the business
  • Key technology vendors (for strategic partnerships and contract negotiations)
  • Industry bodies and standards organisations (for best practices and compliance)
  • Potential acquisition targets (for technical due diligence)
  • Recruitment agencies (for senior talent sourcing)

7What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

  • You'll need to have spent a significant amount of time (at least 5-8 years) as an Engineering Manager, successfully leading multiple teams and delivering complex programmes.
  • You should have a proven track record of developing managers, shaping technical strategy, and managing budgets.
  • A deep technical background, ideally having progressed through senior and lead engineering roles, is non-negotiable.

8What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Advanced Cloud Financial Management (FinOps)

Important within 12 months. Cloud costs are a major line item, and simply optimising isn't enough. You'll need to integrate financial accountability into every technical decision, driving a FinOps culture across your business unit.

Cost allocation and showback/chargeback models · Reserved instances, savings plans, and spot instance strategies · Unit economics of cloud resources · Automated cost governance and anomaly detection

  • This week: Review your current cloud spend reports in detail.
  • This month: Work with Finance to understand their cost reporting needs and align on FinOps metrics.
  • Month 2: Implement a new cost optimisation initiative with one of your teams, tracking its impact.
  • Month 3: Develop a FinOps strategy for your business unit, including training for managers and engineers.

Quick win: Identify the top 3 cost drivers in your cloud bill and challenge your teams to find immediate optimisations.

Secure Software Supply Chain Management

Critical within 6 months. With increasing cyber threats, ensuring the security of every component, dependency, and process in your software supply chain is no longer optional—it's a board-level concern.

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and vulnerability scanning · Dependency management and trusted registries · Code signing and integrity verification · Zero-trust principles applied to the CI/CD pipeline

  • This week: Review recent supply chain attack reports (e.g., SolarWinds, Log4j).
  • This month: Engage with your security team to understand current vulnerabilities and gaps in your supply chain.
  • Month 2: Implement a new tool or process for SBOM generation and dependency scanning across your teams.
  • Month 3: Lead an audit of your CI/CD pipeline's security posture.

Quick win: Ensure all teams are using up-to-date dependency scanners and addressing critical vulnerabilities immediately.

9Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up
  • Attending executive leadership programmes, participating in industry conferences (e.g., QCon, GOTO), contributing to open-source projects (if relevant to our stack), and engaging in regular peer-to-peer coaching with other Directors.
  • We also encourage formal mentorship programmes and leadership training.

10How the AI economy is changing work like this

Before we ask anything of you, here's what we can already say about AI and work of this kind:

The new skill this role is being asked for: AI-Driven Decision Making

Critical within 12 months. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they'll generate insights faster than humans. Your role shifts from data collection to validating AI outputs, understanding their limitations, and making strategic decisions based on AI-augmented intelligence.

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

Your PlanIllustration

Built for Director of Engineering

2 units that map to this job, from the qualifications that cover it.

  1. Lead the work of teams and individuals to enhance performance 3City and Guilds of London Institute · covers 2 of 9 standardsLevel 1
  2. Leading a team in EngineeringExcellence, Achievement & Learning Limited · covers 1 of 9 standardsLevel 2
These are the real units behind this job, in the order they rank for it. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

AI-Driven Decision Making

Critical within 12 months. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they'll generate insights faster than humans. Your role shifts from data collection to validating AI outputs, understanding their limitations, and making strategic decisions based on AI-augmented intelligence.

  • Understanding AI model biases and ethical implications
  • Interpreting AI-generated forecasts and recommendations
  • Implementing AI for talent analytics and retention strategies
  • Using AI for strategic scenario planning and risk assessment

Organisational Resilience & Change Leadership

Critical within 6 months. The pace of technological and market change is only accelerating. You'll need to build organisations that can not only adapt but thrive amidst constant disruption, leading your teams through significant transformations.

  • Principles of adaptive leadership and agile organisational design
  • Strategies for managing resistance to change
  • Building psychological safety during periods of uncertainty
  • Developing a culture of continuous learning and experimentation

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

  • System Design & Architectural Patterns
  • DevOps & Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Principles
  • Technical Debt Management
  • Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Governance
  • Cloud Infrastructure Strategy (AWS/Azure)

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

  1. 1

    Senior Engineering Manager (internal promotion)

    3-5 years as an Engineering Manager, successfully managing multiple teams or a large, critical team.

    Skills to master

    • Scaling agile processes, developing junior managers, cross-functional programme delivery, initial budget management.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Consistently exceeding delivery targets
    • High team retention
    • Strong peer feedback
    • Successfully leading a significant technical initiative end-to-end
  2. 2

    Head of Software Development (from another company)

    10-15 years overall experience, with 5-8 years in a Head of Dev capacity, leading a department or major function.

    Skills to master

    • Strategic planning, organisational design, executive communication, vendor management, budget ownership.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Proven track record of transforming engineering organisations
    • Significant business impact through technology
    • Strong external network
  3. 3

    Staff/Principal Engineer (transition to management)

    12-16 years as a Staff/Principal Engineer, with a strong desire and demonstrated aptitude for people leadership.

    Skills to master

    • People management fundamentals, coaching, delegation, strategic technical influence beyond individual contribution.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Actively mentoring
    • Leading technical initiatives with broad impact
    • Taking on informal leadership roles
    • Demonstrating strong communication and influence

11Where this role leads

The long view:Your journey here isn't just about climbing a ladder; it's about continuously growing your impact, leading through complex challenges, and leaving a lasting legacy on the products and people you work with. We're here to support that journey every step of the way.

Pay & demand

Typical pay £58,640 a year Source: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional), under the Open Government Licence v3.0

The figure is the median for full-time employees in the ONS occupation this job title codes to (Production managers and directors in manufacturing), from the April 2025 survey — about six months old when published, as ASHE always is. It is that occupation's middle, not this role's. Half earn more.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Director of Engineering is actually changing. In about two minutes, the free confidence check asks where you stand on each of the ten. That's the whole check, and it's what makes the plan yours rather than generic.

Where it leads

Roles this leads to

12The team that's yours

No two people are taught the same way. This is one-to-one, not one-to-many.

Zavmo is a hyper-personalised AI learning platform. Twelve virtual tutors, each with a different way of teaching, and one orchestration agent that picks the right one for the moment. So every single lesson is shaped around you, your role, and the way you learn. Not a course everyone sits through. A conversation built for you, and no one else.

…and nine more, matched to you after your first chat. Meet all twelve

Start free and meet yours

13What it feels like

A conversation, not a course

Because your tutor knows your role, your projects and your last session, learning sounds like this. And it's different for every single person:

Lead the work of teams and individuals to enhance performance 3Level 1

Applied to your work in Director of Engineering

This unit aims to provide learners with an understanding of effective team leadership principles and the ability to plan and monitor team activities. Learners will be able to provide constructive feedback and motivate team members to enhance performance, aligning with organisational objectives.

How the thinking builds
  1. Remember
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyse
  5. Evaluate
  6. Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

  1. Your actual work Every lesson is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
  2. What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
  3. The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
  4. How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
  5. Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

DemonstrateIllustration

Evidenced on your work in Director of Engineering

You do not finish by watching something. You finish by showing it on the work you already do, against the measures this job is judged on.

  • Deployment FrequencyHow often our teams release code to productionIncreased deployment frequency by 25% year-on-year across your business unit, meaning faster iteration and feedback.Weekly or more frequently for most services
  • Lead Time for ChangesThe time it takes for a code change to go from commit to productionReduced average lead time from 10 days to 4 days, showing improved efficiency in the CI/CD pipeline.< 1 week (ideally days)
  • Team Retention RatePercentage of engineers who stay with us in your business unitMaintained a 92% retention rate, indicating a healthy and engaging work environment for your teams.> 90% annually
  • Cloud Cost OptimisationReduction in cloud infrastructure spend relative to business growthIdentified and implemented optimisations that saved £150K in cloud costs this financial year without impacting performance.10-15% reduction in spend per active user/transaction

and 1 more in the full scoreboard below.

These are this job's own measures, with its own targets. Nothing is marked evidenced, because nobody has started this yet. Yours would fill in from the work you bring.

Your passport

This isn't a certificate you file away. It's a passport to the life you're designing.

Every credit you earn and every fluency you build adds up: evidence where it counts, carried with you. Zavmo keeps the map: where you are, where you're heading, and the next step, at your pace, around your life. From Director of Engineering to VP of Engineering, and whatever you decide comes after.

Level 7 · in progressAI Fluency→ VP of Engineering→ your design
Where this takes you

Your journey here isn't just about climbing a ladder; it's about continuously growing your impact, leading through complex challenges, and leaving a lasting legacy on the products and people you work with. We're here to support that journey every step of the way.

See Your Progress GrowIllustration
Director of Engineering
  • System Design & Architectural Patterns
  • DevOps & Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Principles
  • Technical Debt Management
  • Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Governance
  • Cloud Infrastructure Strategy (AWS/Azure)
This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

14The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Director of Engineering is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

  1. VP of Engineering

    3-5 years as a Director of Engineering.

    From managing managers to managing multiple Directors, overseeing an entire engineering organisation or a very large segment.

    • Driving company-wide technical transformation
    • Setting global engineering standards
    • Managing large-scale organisational change

  2. Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

    5-8 years as a Director/VP of Engineering.

    From a business unit focus to enterprise-wide technology strategy and innovation, often reporting directly to the CEO.

    • Defining the company's long-term technology vision
    • Driving innovation across all departments
    • Assessing strategic partnerships and acquisitions
Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

Imagine cutting down on tedious tasks, getting deeper insights faster, and communicating more effectively—all thanks to AI. As a Director of Engineering, your time is precious, and AI can help you reclaim it.

In this role, AI isn't about replacing engineers; it's about making you and your teams dramatically more productive. It's about automating the mundane so you can focus on the strategic, the creative, and the human elements of leadership.

Strategic Planning & Forecasting AI

Use AI to analyse historical project data, team velocity, and market trends to generate more accurate forecasts for project timelines, resource needs, and budget allocation. This helps you build more realistic roadmaps and make data-backed investment cases.

Automated Technical Debt Prioritisation

Feed your codebase analysis tools and issue trackers into an AI. It can help identify and prioritise technical debt based on factors like impact, frequency of changes, and potential for future issues, giving you a data-driven argument for refactoring.

Executive Communication Assistant

Use LLMs (like Claude 3 or GPT-4) to draft concise, business-friendly summaries of complex technical reports, architectural decisions, or incident post-mortems for board presentations or cross-functional updates. It translates "engineer-speak" into "executive-speak" in minutes.

Talent Analytics & Retention Insights

AI can help you analyse anonymised HR data to identify patterns in team engagement, potential attrition risks, and skill gaps across your department. This gives you proactive insights to improve retention strategies and talent development programmes.

Common questions

Common questions

How do you become a Director of Engineering?

Common routes in include Senior Engineering Manager (internal promotion) (3-5 years as an Engineering Manager, successfully managing multiple teams or a large, critical team.), Head of Software Development (from another company) (10-15 years overall experience, with 5-8 years in a Head of Dev capacity, leading a department or major function.) and Staff/Principal Engineer (transition to management) (12-16 years as a Staff/Principal Engineer, with a strong desire and demonstrated aptitude for people leadership.). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Director of Engineering progress to?

This role can lead on to VP of Engineering (3-5 years as a Director of Engineering.) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) (5-8 years as a Director/VP of Engineering.), depending on the skills you build.

What level is a Director of Engineering in the UK?

This role aligns to RQF Level 7 on the UK framework, a guide to the depth of qualification it maps to, not a hard entry bar.

What new skills matter most for a Director of Engineering?

Increasingly, AI-Driven Decision Making and Organisational Resilience & Change Leadership. These are the areas where the higher-paid, future-proof work is heading.

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most of them were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

What it costs

Less than one coaching session. Every month.

A single career-coaching hour costs more than a month of this, and it ends when the hour does. Zavmo doesn't. It's £70 a month, about £2.30 a day, for a companion that knows a Director of Engineering, works on the job you actually do, and keeps going at your pace rather than a timetable's.

  • Searching and planning stay free. You only pay when you start learning.
  • Your credits are yours. Regulated, and they don't vanish when a subscription ends.
  • Cancel any time and billing stops. No notice period, no minimum term.

Your path, personalised

You have the map. Walking it is the part we do together.

This route runs to 9 national skill standards. That is a real journey.

Zavmo shapes a learning experience as unique as you are. It fits how you learn, your pace and the work you already do. Every step stays benchmarked to recognised national standards. That’s the plan for becoming a Director of Engineering: personal to you, and it still counts. The first steps are free.

Independent research finds well-designed intelligent tutoring performs nearly as well as one-to-one human tutoring: VanLehn (2011), Educational Psychologist.

A private tutor in the UK averages £35–40 an hour . Zavmo is £70/month.

A real plan on learn.zavmo.ai: Ofqual-regulated units, credits, and a three-month run at your own pace.
Start free No commitment. See your first steps free.

15Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 7

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

Other roles in Technical roles

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.

If you leave this industry

The skills you gain as a Director of Engineering are highly transferable across various industries, from FinTech and HealthTech to E-commerce and SaaS. The principles of building high-performing teams, defining robust architectures, and driving strategic technical initiatives are universal.

Not sure this is the right direction?

Work out what you actually want from work first, then come back and see which roles fit it. Takes about ten minutes.

This role profile is © 2026Growth Engineering Technologies Ltd. Built from UK occupational standards and regulated qualification data, and written for Zavmo.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Build my plan, free Here's the first ten minutes: a 2-minute confidence check → your personalised roadmap → meet the tutors matched to you. No card, cancel any time. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.