Engineering Manager - Shopping Experience in London

About Lyst

Lyst is a global fashion shopping platform founded in London in 2010, catering to over 160M shoppers per year. We curate pieces from 27,000 of the world's leading brands and stores. In 2025, Lyst joined forces with Zozo, operators of Zozotown (Japan's leading fashion e‐commerce platform). This partnership marks a bold new era for Lyst as we accelerate our ambition to redefine the future of fashion shopping through AI, personalisation, and cutting‐edge technology.

The Mission

We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to join our Shopping Experience squad. You will be a key leader in our mission to build the world's most intelligent and seamless fashion shopping platform.

The Role: People, Process & Tech

In this role, you will operate as part of a leadership trio—partnering closely with Product and Design to shape strategy, drive execution, and deliver measurable business impact across Lyst's Marketplace. This squad is at the forefront of the customer experience, building an efficient funnel for getting the customer to buy smoothly and showcasing the value of our partner fashion retailers. You will combine strategic technical leadership with a deep focus on operational excellence, predictable delivery, and, most importantly, the growth and wellbeing of your team.

Key Focus Areas

• Team Leadership: Build a high‐performing, psychologically safe environment where engineers can do their best work. You are accountable for the hiring, retention, mentoring, and career growth of your engineers.
• Delivery Management: You own the "How" — ensuring strategy turns into predictable, high‐quality delivery. You will ensure the team delivers value predictably using Agile methodologies, removing blockers, managing cross‐team dependencies, contributing to code reviews, and pairing with engineers when needed. This is a hands‐on role.
• Technical Strategy: While you may not be writing code daily, you will remain close to the metal. You will guide architectural decisions, uphold code quality standards, and ensure the team is tackling technical debt alongside feature work.
• Collaboration: You will act as a bridge between engineering and the wider business, translating complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights for stakeholders across Marketing, Commercial, and Partnerships.

Within Your First 3 Months

• People: Build strong relationships with your direct reports, understand their motivations and career aspirations, and establish clear growth plans.
• Delivery: Evaluate existing agile practices and implement targeted improvements that increase predictability, quality, and team engagement.
• Strategy: Partner with Product and Engineering Leadership to shape a 6‐month product and technical roadmap aligned with company priorities and measurable outcomes.
• Impact: Successfully deliver a high‐impact initiative that improves the customer journey for our 160M+ annual users.

Tech Stack & Culture

We work in a "You build it, you ship it, you run it" culture. We have a rapid delivery culture, supported by the following stack:

• Backend: Python (Django predominantly)
• Frontend: React / TypeScript / iOS (BFF pattern)
• Infrastructure: Fully Cloud‐Native (AWS), CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
• Testing: Strong focus on BDD, Unit, and E2E testing.

What We're Looking For

• People‐First Mindset: Proven experience managing and mentoring engineers. You know how to inspire teams, build a strong engineering culture, and drive meaningful performance conversations.
• Delivery Expertise: You balance people with structured and data‐driven approaches. You know how to use Agile/Lean processes to make delivery painless and predictable. You are comfortable contributing across the stack and pairing with engineers to unblock, mentor, and raise the bar.
• Technical Expertise: You have a strong background in software engineering building web and/or app products and system design. You can decompose complex problems and guide a team toward pragmatic, scalable architectural solutions.
• Communication: You can explain technical risks to non‐technical stakeholders and translate business goals into engineering tasks.
• Strategic Thinking: You can balance the immediate need to ship with the long‐term health, reliability, and scalability of the platform.

Experience in building high‐scale consumer or e‐commerce platforms is a strong plus, particularly within Python, React, or iOS ecosystems.

Ways of Working

• Office Days: We all come into the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the option to work remotely or come into the office on the other days.
• Time Off: In addition to the 8 statutory bank holidays, you will receive 29 holidays per year. Lyst's holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March.
• Family Leave Package: Enhanced Family Leave for eligible employees, paid time off for dependents and support for fertility treatment & loss.
• Clothing Benefit: Clothing allowance starting at £250, increasing up to £1,000 with length of service.
• Private Healthcare: Comprehensive healthcare scheme from Vitality from day one.
• Training Allowance: £1,000 annual training allowance for conferences, industry events, courses, and resources.
• Pension Scheme: The People's Pension provider. Minimum employee contribution 5% and employer contribution 3%.
• Eye Tests & Vouchers: Free annual eye test and discount towards glasses.
• Cycle‐to‐Work Scheme: Lyst will purchase a bicycle from your chosen retailer; you receive a voucher to pick up your bicycle.
• Transport Season Ticket Loan: Interest‐free season ticket loan to support travel to work.
• Social Events: Company‐wide events, sports days, themed drinks, quizzes, cook‐alongs, team socials, interest‐based groups such as football, running club, book club, culinary, etc.

Diversity & Inclusion

We want to build a world where fashion works for everyone, and we want teams that are just as inclusive. Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture at Lyst. We recognise and celebrate the value and impact diversity brings to our company and are committed to ensuring this is a consistent focus, for which we are held to account. We are committed to treating all applicants fairly and equally, and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply for this role. We are happy to talk about flexible working arrangements.

Inclusive Hiring

Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Lyst we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.