About Phorest
Phorest Salon Software powers over 11,000 hair and beauty salons in Ireland, UK, Germany, Australia, Finland, USA, Canada, UAE and Netherlands, processing 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 the next goal is to become a platform upon which other companies can build applications for premium salons. The system covers every point of the salon experience: 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, sends over 3 million SMS and 4 million emails, processes 200k online bookings, and supports over 150 custom built white label native apps.
About the role
At Phorest, the team creates products clients love and builds exceptional systems that Phorest and its customers can rely on, helping salons, spas and aesthetic clinics run successful businesses and grow with confidence. The ambition is to become the number one platform for premium hair, beauty and aesthetics businesses globally. For the 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.
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 the company look after its customers and run the business: the tools Customer Success teams use to support, retain and grow salons, and the billing systems that underpin 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 to simplify the 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.
Responsibilities
•Build the team from the ground up. Partner with the 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 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.
Requirements
•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.
•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 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 the company, while strengthening the foundations of a business-critical part of the platform.
Benefits
•Private healthcare, 2 Wellness Days, an employee assistance program and a free online GP service.
•Competitive compensation, an Employee Share Purchase Scheme, Pension, Life Assurance, and Income Protection.
•Bike to work scheme and tax saver transport tickets.
•2 weeks leave for Fertility Treatment, Pregnancy Loss and Menopause.
•Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Benefits.
•Learning environment and extensive development opportunities, including development programs and access to online resources like LinkedIn Learning.
•3 moving days for employees who move house.
•Flexi-time and working from home is possible; also open to remote work.
