Lead Engineer

Lyst is a global fashion shopping platform founded in London in 2010, catering to over 160M shoppers per year. We curate pieces from 27,000 of the world's leading brands and stores. In 2025, Lyst joined forces with Zozo, operators of Zozotown (Japan’s leading fashion e-commerce platform). This partnership marks a bold new era for Lyst as we accelerate our vision to transform the future of fashion shopping through AI and technology.

The Mission: We are looking for an experienced Lead Engineer to join our Product Development tribe. This is a high-impact role for a technical leader who wants to remain hands-on while guiding the technical direction of a squad. You will act as the technical anchor in a leadership trio (alongside Product and Design), translating ambiguous business problems into robust, scalable software solutions.

The Role: Architect, Builder, Mentor This role is designed for a "force multiplier"—someone who writes excellent code but creates even more value by enabling the team around them. It is an ideal launchpad for those looking to progress their career in either direction (towards a Staff/Principal Engineer or a management track).

• Technical Authority: You are the guardian of the technical vision. You will lead system design sessions, own the architecture for complex features, and make the hard calls on technical trade-offs.
• Hands-on Delivery: You will be in the codebase daily. Whether it's building the skeleton of a new service, refactoring a legacy bottleneck, or pairing with engineers to unblock them, you lead from the front.
• Mentorship over Management: You are responsible for technical growth—mentoring engineers, design pairing and fostering a culture of engineering excellence. 
• Strategic Alignment: You will collaborate with Product and Engineering Leadership to define a 6-month product and technical roadmap that aligns with business goals.

Within your first 3 months, you will:

• Impact: Ship meaningful features or optimisation that impacts our 160M+ users.
• System Ownership: Assess our current architecture and CI/CD practices, identifying a number of key areas for improvement.
• Delivery: Assess your team's agile ceremonies, practices and tooling; begin implementing iterative changes to improve velocity and happiness.
• Leadership: Establish yourself as the "go-to" technical voice for Product and other Stakeholders, bridging the gap between business requirements and engineering reality.

The Tech Stack & Culture We work in a "You build it, you ship it, you operate it" culture. We have a rapid delivery culture, supported by the following stack:

• Backend: Python (Django/Flask)
• Frontend: React & TypeScript (BFF pattern)
• Infrastructure: Fully Cloud-Native (AWS), Docker, PostgreSQL
• Ops: CI/CD (GitHub Actions), Observability tools.

Requirements

• People-First Mindset: Proven experience managing and mentoring engineers. You know how to inspire a team, create a collaborative culture and are highly effective in performance management.

• Delivery Expertise: You balance people with structured and data-driven approaches. You know how to use Agile/Lean processes to make delivery painless and predictable.
• Technical Expertise: You have a strong background in software engineering building web and/or app products and system design. You can compartmentalize complex problems and guide a team toward robust architectural solutions.
• Communication: You can explain technical risks to non-technical stakeholders and translate business goals into engineering tasks.
• Strategic Thinking: You can balance the immediate need to ship features with the long-term need for platform reliability and scalability.

Bonus points if you have experience with high-traffic consumer/ecommerce platforms or Python/React stacks.

Benefits

Among other benefits, we offer:

• Time Off: 29 days annual leave + 8 bank holidays.
• Health: Private Healthcare by Vitality & discounted eye care.
• Fashion: The Lyst Clothing Benefit (£250 Year 1, rising to £1000 by Year 4).
• Growth: £1500 annual learning budget for conferences and training.
• Culture: Team meet-ups, social events, and sports activities.
• Family & Commute: Childcare vouchers, Cycle-to-work scheme, and season ticket loans.

Diversity & Inclusion at Lyst Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that several demographics are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Lyst, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly, we encourage you to apply.