Software Development Manager

About Us

Club L London is the next-generation online fashion retailer for the forward-thinking woman. Conceptualised and crafted in-house and abroad, we specialise in accessible luxury and designs of unrivalled quality that flatter all figures.

From prom to occasion, maternity, bridal, and beyond, we deliver an elevated shopping experience that connects our global community of trend-setting consumers, influencers, and content creators with fresh collections dropping weekly. Our engineering team builds and runs the platforms behind Club L London and Lavish Alice across multiple markets - and we're scaling fast.

We are looking for a Software Development Manager to lead and grow our engineering team. This is a hands‑on leadership role that blends people management, delivery ownership, and technical direction. You'll be responsible for the developers who build and maintain our e‑commerce platforms, integrations, and data systems - setting the standards, shaping the roadmap, and making sure we ship reliable, scalable software at pace.

You'll manage a team of full‑stack and backend engineers, own delivery end‑to‑end, and remain close enough to the code to make sound architectural calls and unblock your team. You'll report to the CTO and work across a broad, integration‑dense stack spanning Shopify Plus, Node.js services, serverless, and a modern GCP/Big Query data platform.

• Lead, mentor, and line‑manage a team of full‑stack and backend engineers, owning their growth, performance, and development.

• Run regular 1:1s, set clear objectives, and give consistent, actionable feedback.

• Drive hiring - define roles, interview, and build a high‑performing, collaborative engineering culture.

• Manage team capacity, balance workloads, and protect focus time so the team can deliver sustainably.

• Own delivery of the engineering roadmap, translating business priorities into a clear, achievable plan.

• Run agile ceremonies (planning, stand‑ups, retrospectives) and keep work moving through the pipeline.

• Balance BAU, incident response, and project work, managing dependencies, risk, and trade‑offs.

• Report progress, blockers, and delivery forecasts clearly to the CTO and wider stakeholders.

• Guide architecture across e‑commerce platforms, internal tools, and data systems, ensuring reliability, performance, scalability, and security.

• Set direction for backend services and APIs (Node.js, REST/GraphQL), serverless functions, and microservices (AWS Lambda or equivalent).

• Oversee data infrastructure and pipelines across platforms such as Big Query, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL, ensuring efficient data models and performant queries.

• Establish and enforce engineering standards — code review culture, testing, CI/CD, and modern development workflows.

• Own the integration landscape connecting e‑commerce platforms, ERP, marketing, fulfilment, and third‑party services.

• Identify opportunities for automation and system improvement across the business, and turn them into delivered outcomes.

• Ensure integrations are robust, well‑tested, observable, and resilient as the business scales.

• Manage technical relationships with key vendors and platform partners.

• Work closely with e‑commerce, design, content, operations, data, and finance teams to deliver reliable systems and features.

• Translate business needs into technical delivery, and communicate technical concepts clearly to non‑technical stakeholders.

• Champion engineering best practice across the wider tech function.

• Stay technically credible - contribute to code, architecture, code reviews, and complex problem‑solving where it adds the most value.

• Lead by example, setting the bar for quality, pragmatism, and delivery.

• 5+ years in software engineering, with 2+ years leading or line‑managing engineers, ideally within retail, e‑commerce, or high‑traffic digital environments.

• Proven people leadership - mentoring, performance management, and hiring high‑performing teams.

• Strong…