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

We are seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our Salon Management & Reporting engineering teams within the Salon Operations pillar at Phorest. This role will drive the delivery of client-facing solutions that enhance the salon customer experience, including stock management, staff management, rosters, reporting suite and much more.. As the technical leader of the team, you will work closely with product, design, and other engineering groups to ensure solutions are scalable and meet the needs of our global salon partners.

We are looking for a leader with strong people management skills who can inspire, guide, and grow a high-performing engineering team. Your focus will not only be on technical excellence but also on fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and engaging work environment where engineers feel empowered to contribute to innovative solutions.

The ideal candidate will bring a technical background, particularly in backend technologies, with a preference for Java/JVM experience. You should be passionate about building and leading teams, fostering a collaborative and innovative environment while ensuring technical excellence.

Your key responsibilities will involve people and project management, facilitating technical discussions and getting hands-on to unblock the team on the critical path and ensure a high level of quality is maintained. This will ensure you stay deeply connected to your team's technical challenges and growth, enabling you to guide and support your engineers in their career development.

What You'll Do

• People Management & Leadership: Lead, mentor, and develop engineering teams focused on salon management & reporting systems. Foster an environment of continuous learning, personal growth, and open communication to enhance team engagement and performance.

• Technical Leadership: Provide strong technical guidance, especially in backend development, ensuring best practices and scalability in all solutions.

• Hands-On: Contribute by being hands-on regularly here; however, it will be less than 50% of your time. You will work with the engineers to set the technical direction of the team and contribute to items which can unblock the team, enable them to move faster or improve the overall developer experience. This work will not be on the critical path; on occasion, you may need to jump in to support the team.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner with product managers, designers, and other engineering teams to deliver cohesive, high-quality product solutions.

• Project Management: Drive the execution of key technical projects, ensuring that timelines, quality, and business goals are met.

• Innovation & Process Improvement: Foster a culture of innovation within the team while implementing process improvements to drive efficiency and agility.

• Team Building: Play an active role in recruiting, onboarding, and building a diverse and inclusive engineering team.

• Engineering Culture: Contribute to Phorest’s engineering culture by promoting agile practices and a continuous improvement mindset.

Who You Are

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2 years in a leadership or management role. (e.g. Engineering Manager, Tech Lead, Team Lead)

• Strong people management skills: Proven experience in coaching, mentoring, and developing engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration and accountability. Experience in recruiting, building, and mentoring engineering teams.

• Technical background in object-oriented software design, Java a must.

• Excellent understanding of agile methodologies and experience improving team workflows and processes.

• Strong collaboration skills, able to work across departments to achieve business and technical goals.

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Experience

• Previous experience leading teams working on client-facing systems in the salon, spa, or similar customer-facing industries.

• Experience in a remote-first environment and managing geographically distributed teams.

• Familiarity with building scalable systems for customer engagement and management.

• Additional experience working with frontend technologies a bonus

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.