Senior Engineering Manager - Data Platform, 6-Month FTC

Depop is the community-powered circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover desirable secondhand fashion. With a community of over 35 million users, Depop is on a mission to make fashion circular, redefining fashion consumption. Founded in 2011, the company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York and Manchester, and in 2021 became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy.

Our mission is to make fashion circular and to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Just as our platform connects people globally, we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences, knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.

If, due to a disability, you need adjustments to complete the application, please let us know by sending an email with your name, the role to which you would like to apply, and the type of support you need to complete the application to adjustments@depop.com.

We’re looking for a customer focused Senior Engineering Manager – Data Platform to support the teams responsible for Depop’s data platform. You’ll oversee the teams building our foundational data platform — from experimentation, event ingestion pipelines to our data lake, governance frameworks, and data observability and real-time analytics capabilities. You will work closely with data scientists, machine learning engineers, backend teams, and product leaders to ensure that our data systems are scalable, secure, observable, and enable innovation across the company.

• Partner with stakeholders across Product, Data, and Engineering to translate strategic goals into platform capabilities.
• Lead and mentor 1-2 squads responsible for experimentation, analytics event logging, batch data platform, real-time infrastructure, data observability and governance.
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders to define and drive the technical roadmap for Depop’s modern data platform, enabling reliable and scalable analytics and ML pipelines.
• Advocate for engineering excellence, balancing velocity with long-term maintainability, privacy, and performance.
• Champion data observability and governance, and privacy-by-design principles across the organisation.
• Hire, mentor, and develop high-performing engineers.

• Proven experience managing data infrastructure or platform teams at scale, ideally in a consumer or marketplace environment.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and modern data ecosystems — including experience with Databrick, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka and DBT.
• Demonstrated success in managing data platforms at scale, including both batch processing and real-time streaming architectures.
• Deep understanding of data warehousing concepts, ETL/ELT processes, and analytics engineering.
• Strong programming skills, particularly in Python, Scala or Java, and a solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience working with privacy-sensitive datasets and implementing robust data observability and governance.
• A strong technical background — you’ve built or architected systems hands-on, even if you’re now more focused on leadership.
• Track record of building and scaling high-performing engineering teams.
• Ability to think strategically and pragmatically: you can plan for scale and move quickly.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; you’re comfortable influencing across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Experience with machine learning infrastructure or ML Ops practices.
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures in a mobile-first product environment.
• Prior work in fashion, marketplaces, or sustainability-driven tech.

• Health + Mental Wellbeing: PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa, subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space, Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support, Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting.
• Work/Life Balance: 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days, 1 company-wide day off per quarter, Impact hours: Up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering, fully paid 4 week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop, flexible working: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options *role dependant, all offices are dog-friendly, ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries.
• Family Life: 18 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees, IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave.
• Learn + Grow: Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more, mentorship and programmes to upskill employees.
• Your Future: Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary), pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings.
• Depop Extras: Employees enjoy free shipping on their Depop sales within the UK. Special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards!