Engineering Manager - Retail Technology

Internal use only - Grade D

About us

We’re the team behind digital retailer Very.

Our purpose, helping families get more out of life, powers everything we do.

And we want our people to get more out of life too! If you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll enjoy heaps of flexibility, great perks and benefits, and the freedom to be yourself, keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go.

If you love making a difference, you’ll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers. ✨

About the Teams

Our software engineering teams are responsible for designing, building, integrating, and managing technology across all products and functions. They focus on developing secure, highly available, cloud-based solutions, utilising open-source technologies where appropriate. By employing APIs as a standard for integration, they facilitate robust communication between internal and external systems. Our teams adopt data and event-driven approaches, working iteratively and continuously to deliver high-quality solutions.

This role sits within our Retail Technology team, they own the creation and maintenance of our product catalogue and the prices we sell products at. We set pricing strategy, including when to run offers and which types of promotions to use. We manage product set-up end to end, on-site copy, categorisation, and navigation to help customers find products easily.

We also manage supplier contracts, stock planning, and forecasting to ensure timely replenishment. The Retail team are looking to leverage AI capability to improve our price decisioning process to improve our margin as an organisation and better value for our customers. Along side this we want to create more bespoke product copy and attribution so customers can find the products they want more easily. The roles will be linked to new squads being set up to deliver these initiatives and maintain, run and enhance them going forward.

About The Role

As an Engineering Manager, you will be leading and line managing a team of Engineers within one of our squads. This role centres around technical leadership. Along with leading the squad you’ll be actively involved in designing, implementing, assuring, and running the products and services that your squad are responsible for.

As an Engineering Manager your responsibilities will include:

• Working with the Head of Technology and Senior Engineering Manager to lead your team to deliver the Product & Technology roadmap in a manner aligned to our SDLC.
• Taking ownership of the personal development and performance of each member, embedding a culture of continuous improvement both for individuals and the team as a whole.
• Collaborating with other colleagues to ensure all software is built with security, reliability, scalability, and operability
• Handling technical debt, working with architects and product management to balance work within the squads to ensure risks are managed around aging code and platforms.
• Promoting the sharing of knowledge and standard methodologies both internally and externally across Engineering.
• Actively contributing to the Engineering Manager community within your performance unit as well as engaging and collaborating with the wider technology team.

About You

• Leading from the front you will demonstrate experience of providing clear direction and collaboration, coaching, mentoring and development support.
• You are known for your thought leadership and critical thinking in the technical space, while being able to apply business context,
• Experience of managing and leading engineering teams in building new high quality systems, improving stability, security and performance,
• You are experienced with software engineering in the cloud.
• You are keen to learn new technologies and support your team to continuously improve.
• You are experienced in operating in an Agile environment (SCRUM and Kanban) and are constantly looking to automate in areas such as CI/CD and quality assurance
• Experience with some of the following would be a bonus: AWS, Java, Python, React, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, automated testing, robust deployment approaches, observability, serverless computing, APIs, DevSecFinOps

Some of our benefits

• Flexible, hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment

• £6500 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays
• Udemy learning access
• Up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk

• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be found on our career site

How to apply

Please note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly, and if successful in securing this role, you will be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS, Right to Work checks and if a specific requirement of your role a DBS (criminal records) check. Should your application progress we require you to let the team know if there is anything you need to disclose in relation to any of these checks prior to them being undertaken, including any unspent criminal convictions.

What happens next?

Our talent acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our interview process is tailored to each role and can be in-person or held remotely.

You can expect a one-stage interview process for this position:

1st stage - A 60-90 minute interview, ideally in person with the hiring team to discuss your skills and relevant experience. This is a great opportunity to find out more about the role and to ask any questions you may have.

As an inclusive employer please do let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.

Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities

We’re building a culture of everyday inclusion, and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don’t discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

We want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply, interview, or perform a role, let us know via [email protected]. We’ll be happy to support you.

We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer and have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.