At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead engineering teams to deliver exceptional products with a customer-first approach.
- Company: Join a forward-thinking company that values innovation and collaboration.
- Benefits: Enjoy private healthcare, wellness days, competitive pay, and flexible working options.
- Other info: Flexible hours, remote work options, and a supportive culture for growth.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by shaping engineering strategy and empowering teams.
- Qualifications: Proven leadership in engineering with strong delivery and people management skills.
The predicted salary is between 58349 - 71315 £ per year.
The Opportunity
This is a 12-month fixed-term maternity cover for the Director of Engineering — Salon Operations & Consumer.
You'll lead two engineering organisations, partnering closely with Product, Design and fellow Engineering leaders to ensure our teams continue to deliver exceptional products for our customers.
As a manager of managers, you'll provide stability, clear direction and strategic leadership while maintaining a healthy, high-performing engineering organisation.
Success in this role means delivering predictable outcomes, supporting exceptional leaders, and ensuring our teams continue to thrive throughout the transition.
- What You’ll Do
- Lead with the customer in mind
- Champion a customer-first engineering culture, balancing product delivery with technical excellence, reliability, and long-term platform health.
- Help teams stay focused on delivering meaningful customer outcomes while making thoughtful trade-offs when priorities compete.
- Lead Engineering for Salon Operations & Consumer
- Provide strategic engineering leadership across the domain, building strong partnerships with Product, Design, Customer Success, and Support.
- Create clarity, alignment, and momentum, empowering teams to make great decisions and deliver with confidence.
- Drive operational excellence
- Oversee our Level 3 support model, ensuring customer issues are resolved quickly while identifying opportunities to improve reliability, tooling, and engineering practices.
- Champion high standards for quality, security, performance, and operational health across your organisation.
- Shape strategy and deliver impact
- Translate business goals into a clear engineering vision and roadmap.
- Drive initiatives that improve customer outcomes while balancing delivery, technical investment, and organisational priorities.
- Grow exceptional leaders and teams
- Coach and support Heads of Engineering and Principal Engineers to build high-performing, engaged teams.
- Foster a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, feedback, and growth.
- Build a healthy engineering organisation
- Ensure teams have the people, processes, and support they need to succeed.
- Use data and team feedback to continually improve performance, engagement, and the way we work.
Who You Are
- Proven experience as a Director of Engineering or similar leading multiple teams/groups in a product software environment (manager-of-managers).
- Strong track record in delivery leadership: prioritisation, risk management, dependency coordination, and stakeholder communication.
- Credible technical depth to challenge and support architectural choices (without needing to be a hands‑on contributor).
- Experience partnering closely with Product to deliver outcomes for customers.
- Demonstrated people leadership: coaching managers incl. managers of managers, developing senior ICs, creating clarity and psychological safety.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and making timely decisions with incomplete information.
Benefits
Your wellbeing is important to us - we provide private healthcare, 2 Wellness Days, an employee assistance program and a free online GP service.
As part of our Financial Wellbeing, we provide competitive Compensation, an Employee Share Purchase Scheme, Pension, Life Assurance, and Income Protection.
We help you travel by providing a bike to work scheme as well as tax saver transport tickets.
We support the women who work in Phorest by offering 2 weeks leave for Fertility Treatment, Pregnancy Loss and Menopause.
We care for your family and provide Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Benefits.
We grow our own timber!
We provide a great learning environment and extensive development opportunities.
We run development programs and provide access to many online resources including Linked In learning.
Moving house? Phorest employees get 3 moving days.
Phorest is an equal opportunity employer. For this position, flexi-time and working from home is possible. We are also open to remote work.
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Director of Engineering — Salon Operations & Consumer (12-month contract) in Leatherhead employer: Phorest Software
Phorest Software is an exceptional employer that values creativity and innovation, offering a dynamic work culture where collaboration thrives. With flexible working options, including remote work availability, employees enjoy a healthy work-life balance while having access to continuous growth opportunities in the fast-paced e-commerce sector. Join us to make a meaningful impact on user experiences in the salon and clinic industry.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Director of Engineering — Salon Operations & Consumer (12-month contract) in Leatherhead
✨Get Involved in Open-Source Projects
Diving into open-source projects is a brilliant way to showcase your skills and connect with other developers in the community. Not only will you beef up your GitHub profile but you might also catch the eye of someone at Phorest Software who values hands-on experience over just theory.
✨Attend Local Tech Meetups
Tech meetups are gold mines for networking and discovering job opportunities, especially in the fast-paced world of software engineering. Check out local listings for events in your area and don’t shy away from introducing yourself. This could lead directly to a temporary position at Phorest Software!
✨Showcase Your Work Online
With temporary roles, it’s all about standing out in a short space of time. Create a portfolio website where you highlight your projects and skills. Talk about your code, and provide links to your GitHub repositories. This will not only demonstrate your abilities but will also make it easier for recruiters at Phorest Software to see what you bring to the table.
✨Leverage Temporary Job Boards
Don’t forget to check specialised job boards for temporary software development roles. Websites like We Work Remotely or Remote OK often list short-term gigs that can be a perfect fit. Apply directly through our website as well, making sure your application is sharp—temporary roles can move fast!
We think you need these skills to ace Director of Engineering — Salon Operations & Consumer (12-month contract) in Leatherhead
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Off Your Tech Skills:Make sure your CV highlights your tech stack and any programming languages you’re proficient in. Include specifics about any frameworks or technologies you’ve worked with; they can make you stand out in the sea of applicants. It’s all about showing that you have the chops we need at Phorest Software!
Portfolio 2.0:Since you’re applying for a temporary gig, it’s super important to showcase a portfolio that highlights your best projects. Include links to GitHub or any personal projects that demonstrate what you can do in a real-world environment. This gives us a taste of your style and your problem-solving approach!
Keep It Brief and Relevant:With a temporary position, we want to see your ability to hit the ground running. Be concise in your CV and cover letter; stick to experiences that directly relate to the role. Highlight any previous temporary roles or freelance gigs that show your adaptability and quick learning!
Tailor Your Cover Letter:Don’t just send a generic cover letter. Personalise it for Director of Engineering — Salon Operations & Consumer (12-month contract) at Phorest Software! Mention why this temporary role excites you and how you see yourself contributing in the short run. Show us what you've got and why you're the one for this quick turn-around!
How to prepare for a job interview at Phorest Software
✨Nail the Technical Skills
For a software engineering role, you'll likely face technical questions or coding tasks during your interview. Brush up on the relevant programming languages and frameworks that Phorest Software uses, and don’t forget to practice some coding challenges on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank. Showing your coding prowess can really make you stand out!
✨Prepare for System Design Questions
Even for a temporary role, having a grasp of system design principles can be crucial. Be ready to discuss how you would architect a software solution, including discussing trade-offs, scalability, and performance considerations. Having examples from previous projects can really show off your analytical thinking.
✨Demonstrate Your Adaptability
Since this is a temporary role, you'll want to emphasise your ability to hit the ground running. Highlight experiences where you quickly adapted to new technologies or teams. Let’s make it clear to the interviewers at Phorest Software that you can learn on the job and deliver results in a short timeframe!
✨Show Off Your Portfolio
Make sure to have a portfolio or GitHub ready showcasing your projects. Having tangible evidence of what you've done—be it personal projects, contributions to open-source, or previous work—can convey how capable you are. Tailor this for what might interest Phorest Software, so it's relevant and sparks conversation during your interview.
