Engineering Manager

About Phorest

Would you like to create the future of a product used by thousands of businesses and millions of consumers? Phorest Salon Software powers over 11,000 hair and beauty salons in Ireland, UK, Germany, Australia, Finland, USA, Canada, UAE and Netherlands and the platform processes 7 million appointments a month for hair and beauty consumers. Phorest is the number 1 salon software brand for premium independent salons in those markets and our next goal is to become a platform upon which other companies can build applications for premium salons.

Our system touches every point of the salon experience. We have the in-salon software desktop application, Phorest Go (the native staff application), online bookings website for salons, and custom native apps per salon. In a typical month, Phorest processes 3 million appointments and we send over 3 million SMS and 4 million emails. We process 200k online bookings per month and over 150 custom built white label native apps.

The Opportunity

At Phorest, we create products our clients love and build and run exceptional systems that Phorest and its customers can rely on, helping salons, spas and aesthetic clinics run successful businesses and grow with confidence. Our software brings together the tools they need to run their day, support their teams and build lasting client relationships.

Our ambition is to become the number one platform for premium hair, beauty and aesthetics businesses globally. For our Product & Engineering teams, that means understanding the people behind those businesses and building thoughtful, reliable products that make a real difference to how they work. You'll join colleagues across Product, Design, Engineering and Data, bringing your expertise to challenges that matter to the businesses we serve.

We're looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to build and lead a brand-new engineering team from the ground up. You'll shape the team, its ways of working and its technical foundations from day one.

The team will focus on the internal systems that help us look after our customers and run our business: the tools our Customer Success teams use to support, retain and grow salons, and the billing systems that underpin our revenue. It's a rare chance to work on systems with direct, measurable impact on the business, and to modernise critical, long-standing platforms in a careful, incremental way.

You'll partner closely with a Product Manager, supported by experienced Principal and Staff Engineers. You'll also help set the technical direction: where data should live, which systems own what, when to buy versus build, and how we simplify our wider tooling landscape over time.

This is a role for someone who wants to stay close to the code and the architecture while building a team that delivers reliably and enjoys doing it.

What You'll Do

• Build the team from the ground up. Partner with our People team to hire and onboard engineers, creating an inclusive environment where people feel supported and can do their best work. Coach engineers through regular one-to-ones, clear feedback and meaningful development conversations.

• Stay hands-on. Pair with engineers, unblock the team and contribute to technical design and implementation. Expect to spend around 40–50% of your time on hands-on technical work, flexing with the team's needs.

• Shape technical direction. Work with Senior, Staff and Principal Engineers to agree architectural principles and guardrails, so that short-term solutions move us toward a coherent long-term direction.

• Turn business needs into a clear plan. Co-own the roadmap with your Product Manager, involve the team in decisions and translate priorities into practical technical execution. Deliver in small, valuable slices.

• Own delivery across more than one area of focus. Make priorities, dependencies and trade-offs explicit, communicate progress openly and raise risks early.

• Reduce risk in business-critical systems. Improve the security, reliability and maintainability of the systems the team owns, and help move important workflows onto safer, modern platforms without disrupting live operations.

• Partner across the business. Build strong relationships with Customer Success, Finance, Business Systems and Data colleagues, keeping the team focused on outcomes that make their work easier and lead to better results for salons.

• Measure what matters. Define success in business outcomes such as time saved, churn reduced, revenue expanded and cost removed, rather than the amount of software shipped.

• Keep improving how we work. Create clear, sustainable delivery practices, and explore practical ways to use AI to increase the team's leverage and throughput.

Who You Are

• Experience: Typically 5+ years in software engineering, including 1–2+ years managing engineers directly or leading a team as a tech lead or engineering manager

• Technical depth: Strong software engineering foundation, ideally in Java or another JVM-based language, with a track record of designing scalable, maintainable systems and remaining hands-on in technical execution.

• People leadership: Able to coach and develop engineers, create a high trust environment, set clear expectations, give constructive feedback, and contribute to hiring, onboarding and establishing effective team practices.

• System design: Experience designing API-driven or event-based systems and integrations, balancing pragmatic delivery with long-term maintainability.

• Delivery: Comfortable working with Agile teams to improve delivery, navigate ambiguity and turn evolving requirements into reliable, valuable solutions.

• Collaboration: Experienced in leading remote-first teams and partnering across engineering, product and business functions, communicating technical decisions, risks and trade-offs clearly.

• Mindset: Pragmatic, outcome-driven and curious, with a growth mindset and a genuine commitment to customers and colleagues.

Preferred Experience

• Experience with CRM, customer success or other enterprise business platforms (Salesforce preferred).

• Experience with billing, payments or other financially sensitive systems.

• Experience modernising or migrating legacy systems incrementally.

• Familiarity with data integration or synchronisation across multiple tools.

• Experience making build-versus-buy decisions and rationalising third-party tooling.

• Experience using AI tools to boost engineering productivity.

• Previous work in SaaS, customer success or operations-heavy environments.

• Experience with working across multiple countries, cultures and timezones

You’ll help establish a team that delivers reliably, takes pride in its engineering and supports people to grow. By improving the systems behind Customer Success and Billing, you'll make it easier for Phorest colleagues to support salons throughout their journey with us, while strengthening the foundations of a business-critical part of our platform.

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 LinkedIn learning.

🏠 Moving house? Phorest employees get 3 moving days.

Want to learn more about Phorest? Check out nothingventured.rocks for our blog and Insights on building an evergreen company from the team here at Phorest.

Phorest is an equal opportunity employer. For this position, flexi-time and working from home is possible. We are also open to remote work. Get in touch to ask for more information or to chat about your future with Phorest!

Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other marginalised folks tend to only apply when they check every box. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch. We'd love to have a chat and see if you could be a great fit.