Lead Engineer in Manchester

A bit about us: Established in 1994, The Fragrance Shop is the UKs leading independent fragrance retailer. Our aim is to make mainstream and luxury fragrances affordable and accessible to all. We showcase more than 130 fragrance brands in over 220 stores throughout the UK and online at www.thefragranceshop.co.uk. We are expanding and are looking for a Lead Engineer to join the team and be part of a growing and vibrant brand.

Why Youll Love Working Here

• Enjoy work-life balance with our flexible working scheme - including working from home allowance, duvet days and the choice to flex your working hours
• Vibrant state-of-the-art office, conveniently located in Trafford Park with great transport links and free onsite parking
• No need to travel to the gym we have one here for you! Take advantage of our free onsite gym facilities before/after work or even pop in at lunch time
• Generous staff discounts on a wide range of fabulous fragrances
• Excellent progression and development opportunities - work with teams who are passionate about what they do and develop your expertise within a creative and collaborative space

The role: An exciting opportunity to play a pivotal role delivering best-in-class web and mobile customer experiences within an organisation that has adopted multi-channel at the heart of its retail business strategy. Working for a fast-growing dynamic retailer which is constantly exploiting new opportunities that require enthusiastic, passionate and capable people to support them in this growth. Get in on the ground floor and take full control of the development of our e-commerce digital platforms, own the product development roadmap, build and lead an engineering team, and deliver a high-performing international e-commerce experience for our customers across web and mobile.

Our current stack includes Next.js (web) hosted on Azure and a React Native mobile app. This role requires a hands-on technical leader and architect who can set direction and still ship.

What Youll Be Doing

• Establish a dedicated engineering function to maintain and enhance our e-commerce web (Next.js) and mobile (React Native) platforms.
• Take ownership of an existing codebase and drive improvements in architecture, maintainability, performance, reliability, and developer experience.
• Provide technical and solution architecture leadership, implementing best-practice design, development and delivery of a platform that is multi-currency, multi-language and dynamically responsive across devices.
• Create and manage the product development vision/roadmap in partnership with Product, Design, and Technology leadership.
• Be hands-on: contribute code, lead from the front, unblock complex engineering problems, and set a high bar for quality.
• Recruit, grow, and manage the engineering team (web + mobile), including coaching, performance management, and setting standards.
• Promote modern tooling, frameworks and components to increase quality and reduce friction in the development process (CI/CD, testing, observability, code standards).
• Work with appropriate project partners (internal and external) to identify and coordinate new system developments and/or enhancements.
• Develop project scope of work documents and project plans including analysis of benefit, cost, schedule and related risks.
• Introduce and monitor development quality systems that control and manage quality and acceptance (testing strategy, release governance, monitoring and incident learnings).
• Identify the technical approach to be used on a given project and manage the system development process end-to-end.
• Understand the commercial business strategy and ensure that systems development is aligned to meet commercial needs (conversion, customer experience, international growth, operational robustness).

What Youll Bring

• At least 8 years software development experience with the last 3+ years in a Head of Development / Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer / Technical Architect role leading teams and setting technical direction.
• Strong track record designing and developing mission-critical, customer-facing applications in production.
• Full SDLC ownership: delivery, quality, reliability, security, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Agile delivery experience (Scrum/Kanban) with quality-led practices and a pragmatic testing strategy.

• E-commerce / online retail (or similarly high-traffic transactional platforms).
• Web applications and modern frontend architecture.
• Mobile application development (React Native).
• API-driven systems and integration patterns (REST/GraphQL; event-driven awareness is a plus).
• Performance, SEO, conversion optimisation, and experimentation mindset.

• Web: deep hands-on expertise with Next.js (React) including SSR/SSG/ISR, routing, rendering strategies, caching, and SEO implications.
• Mobile: strong experience with React Native architecture, navigation, performance optimisation, release management (App Store/Play Store), and stability.
• Strong TypeScript/JavaScript engineering capability and modern frontend patterns (component architecture, state management, data-fetching patterns).
• Experience designing and implementing design systems / UI component libraries; strong accessibility (WCAG mindset), i18n, and responsive design.

• CI/CD pipelines for web and mobile; strong understanding of build/release processes and environment management.
• Strong PR/review standards with source control and issue tracking (GitHub/Azure DevOps/Jira or similar).
• Testing strategy across unit/integration/e2e (e.g., Jest, Playwright/Cypress, React Native testing) and quality gates.

• Proven experience running production workloads on Azure (preferred), including deployment pipelines, environments, monitoring, and operational readiness.
• Knowledge of performance monitoring and error tracking (application monitoring, crash reporting, logging, alerting).

• Experience building and optimising key journeys such as home/catalog/search/PDP/cart/checkout/payment.
• Appreciation for SEO, analytics instrumentation, experimentation/A-B testing, and feature flags.
• Experience with multi-language, multi-currency platforms (or similar internationalisation complexity).

• Degree in a suitable subject such as Computer Science / Software Engineering (or equivalent practical experience).

How To Apply

Simply upload your CV via our careers page. Join us now and help shape the future of fragrance retail! The Fragrance Shop is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Due to the high volume of applications that we receive, we are regrettably not able to respond to everyone. If you have not heard from us within four weeks of your application, please assume that on this occasion you have not been successful.