Senior Engineering Manager - Data Platform in London

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.

We’re looking for a customer focused Senior Engineering Manager – Data Platform to lead and evolve the teams responsible for Depop’s modern data platform. In this role, you’ll help grow our platform capabilities while working with the team to continuously improve how we execute and collaborate. You’ll oversee squads building the systems that power analytics, machine learning, and product experimentation — including our experimentation platform, event ingestion pipelines, data lake, governance frameworks, and real-time analytics. Working closely with Data Science, Machine Learning, Backend Engineering, and Product leadership, you’ll ensure our data platform is scalable, reliable, and enables fast, trustworthy decision-making across the company.

Responsibilities

• Partner with stakeholders across Product, Data, and Engineering to translate strategic goals into clear, actionable platform capabilities.
• Lead and mentor 1–2 squads responsible for experimentation platforms (Optimizely), analytics event logging, batch processing, real-time infrastructure, data observability, and governance.
• Drive strong execution across teams, establishing clarity, accountability, and predictable delivery in a complex data environment.
• Evolve and scale our real-time streaming platform, ensuring it supports reliable, low-latency data processing for product, analytics, and machine learning use cases.
• Own and evolve Depop’s experimentation platform (Optimizely), ensuring reliable, scalable, and statistically sound A/B testing.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap for the data platform, balancing short-term delivery with long-term scalability and maintainability.
• Champion engineering excellence across performance, reliability, and privacy-by-design principles.
• Establish robust data observability and governance practices to improve data quality, trust, and lineage.
• Hire, mentor, and develop high-performing engineers.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing data infrastructure or platform teams at scale, ideally in a consumer or marketplace environment.
• Experience working with teams to strengthen delivery practices and overall effectiveness in complex or evolving environments.
• Experience leading teams through periods of change or transformation, including raising engineering standards and accountability.
• Experience building or owning experimentation platforms (e.g. Optimizely), with a solid understanding of A/B testing and experiment design.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and modern data ecosystems (Databricks, Apache Spark, Kafka, DBT).
• Strong experience with both batch processing and real-time streaming architectures.
• Deep understanding of data warehousing, ETL/ELT pipelines, and analytics engineering.
• Strong programming skills (Python, Scala, or Java) and experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience working with privacy-sensitive data and implementing strong data governance and observability practices.
• Strong technical foundation — you’ve built or architected systems hands-on.
• Track record of building, stabilising, and scaling high-performing engineering teams.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Bonus Points

• Experience with machine learning infrastructure or MLOps practices.
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures in mobile-first products.
• Experience in marketplaces, fashion, or sustainability-driven tech.

Additional Information

• 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!