Engineering Manager, Kafka

Brief info about Vinted

Our mission is to make second-hand the first choice, and we're looking for people who want to help us get there. Every day, we work together to help our members buy and sell pre-loved clothing and lifestyle items, giving each piece a second life - or even a third.
The Vinted Group is made up of three business units that support this mission:

Vinted Marketplace is Europe's leading platform for second-hand fashion and a go-to destination for all kinds of pre-loved items, with a growing range of categories. Our platform connects millions of members across 20+ markets, helping great items find a new life.

Vinted Go enhances the shipping experience with a vast network of over 500,000 pick-up and drop-off points, partnering with more than 60 carriers across Europe, with added services like item verification for peace of mind on high-value pieces.

Vinted Pay is the newest part of the Vinted Group, dedicated to bringing secure, reliable payments to buyers and sellers across Europe. Seamlessly integrated into the Vinted app, it helps keep every transaction safe, efficient, and easy for our members.

Founded in 2008 in Lithuania, Vinted began as a way for friends to find new homes for clothes they no longer needed. In 2019, we became Lithuania's first unicorn! Today, our headquarters remain in Vilnius, and we've grown with offices across Europe, supported by a team of over 2,000 people.

As an Engineering Manager for the Kafka team, you will lead an engineering team responsible for providing managed services, tooling, and standards for multiple Vinted product teams that need asynchronous message processing. This spans the full scope of the domain - from operating infrastructure and running Kafka clusters across multiple data centers, to abstracting complex systems into easy-to-use managed services that support core Vinted operations at scale.

Your main responsibility will be the health, morale, and efficiency of your team, ensuring they successfully operate and grow parts of the platform while developing "golden paths" for product developers.

The newly established Kafka team in the Persistence domain currently consists of 5 experienced engineers, with plans to grow further. In this role, you will report to the Director of Engineering and form a strong leadership partnership with the team's Staff Engineer, who leads deep technical architecture and technology choices, and Technical Program Manager (TPM), who drives cross-team delivery and roadmap alignment.

Together, you will empower the team to deliver reliable, high-quality services to Vinted's wider development organization.

• Lead and develop a team of 5+ infrastructure engineers, driving individual goal setting, regular feedback cycles, and quarterly performance reviews.
• Build individual career development plans, mentoring engineers to reach their potential and supporting team growth.
• Keep track of team health, delivery velocity, and operational workload to prevent burnout and ensure a sustainable pace.
• Create, refine, and take accountability for efficient operational procedures, agile workflows, incident response routines, and on-call practices.
• Help unblock engineers, resolve cross-team dependencies, and foster strong collaboration with peer platform teams.
• Participate in engineering management rituals, organizational planning, post-incident reviews, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Oversee team execution, capacity planning, and hiring efforts as the team expands.
• Work with the Staff Engineer and TPM to turn technical strategy into well-structured roadmaps, clear team priorities, and predictable delivery.
• Communicate with internal stakeholders and development teams across Vinted to ensure transparent service expectations, SLAs, and roadmap visibility.
• Ensure the team delivers eventually consistent systems that keep data synchronized across cross-Atlantic markets without sacrificing performance.
• Focus on your team's and your own professional and personal growth, including conducting performance and compensation reviews.

• Have experience managing, coaching, and developing software and/or infrastructure engineering teams, with a track record of delivering results.
• Have a strong understanding of goal-setting frameworks, performance review cycles, continuous feedback, and career growth pathways for engineers.
• Are comfortable collaborating in a leadership triad, partnering closely with a Staff Engineer on…