VP - Engineering

Role Summary:

As a VP of Engineering at Lyst, you are part of the most senior team of technologists in the company - responsible for setting the direction, culture and technology approach used across the entire organisation.

You are first and foremost a leader, with a strong technical history. You have passion and experience in building, scaling and operating ecommerce platforms as well as building exceptional teams of technologists.

Your combination of deep technical background, creative problem solving and strong leadership enables you to work with high impact; building strong technical strategies and guiding teams towards highly effective technical solutions.

You strive for alignment, progress and high impact delivery - sensing misalignment and ill-suited plans is in your DNA. Your voice of experience is respected and sought by both your teams and the wider business. Through this experience you coach your teams - they too are building this sense and they look to you for guidance.

You also know when it’s time to say no - and can land this not with frustration, but with clear context and rationale which ends in closer alignment.

You know how to create and apply tools and techniques to drive a high performance culture, by leveraging your team and bringing alignment.

You have a deeply evolved understanding of leading leaders - you know how to ‘press your people’s buttons’, how to motivate them and get the best from them. You are comfortable using a variety of techniques, some more structured, some more human to drive this process.

You can get into the details when needed, but your energy comes from looking up into the business and out across the wider leadership team - using the insight you gain to point your teams in the right direction. Through this you bring clarity, alignment and a strong sense of purpose to those who work for you.

You are known as a supporter, an unblocker, a positive forward force by your peers - both inside and outside of engineering up to ExCo level (commercial stakeholders love working with you, product trust in your judgement). You present well constructed plans which are in tune with Lyst’s needs, regularly resulting in little friction due to the trust and strong reputation you have built.

You have the ability to translate complex technical concepts into understandable information that can be used by non engineering teams.

This leads to trust in all of your stakeholders that you are someone who delivers.

You can see future opportunities and you know how to leverage technology to get there. You are confident in direction, with a deep understanding on how to bridge longer term vision / strategy with nearer term execution - filling your stakeholders with confidence along the way.

Requirements

Accountabilities Within Your Organisation (Tribe, Chapter):

As the next line of accountability under the CTO, you will take accountability for the following areas of your department:

• Delivering to a clear technical strategy which supports the company direction
• Delivering against the Lyst technology strategy & best practice
• Ensuring high quality output for all end-user cohorts
• Organisational planning & budgeting
• Organisational health, hiring & retention
• Creating an inclusive engineering culture
• Setting and maintaining a high-performance culture
• Efficient output of the teams in your organisation
• Effective inter-discipline relationships / interface with engineering chapter
• Building a strong, collaborative leadership team
• Security, stability, scalability of the platform
• Be a role model for Lyst cultural values
• Deeply understand and lead through the Tribe Engineering Lead, peer and sub-roles
• Communicating complex technical issues to broad audiences

Involvement in Wider Engineering & Leadership:

There are a number of activities which VPs are expected to be involved in at engineering chapter level. These will not be individual accountabilities, but input, drive & some ownership is expected.

• Feeding into the central technology strategy to ensure departmental needs are represented
• Smooth and effective ways of working across tribes and chapters (VP areas)
• Contribute to and influence the wider product and business strategy
• Balancing business, product & engineering priorities to deliver high impact
• Create a culture of ownership and responsibility across engineering
• Identifying weaknesses in our overall systems (processes, technology) and finding ways to solve them
• Representing the impact your teams are having in relation to company objectives (alongside product and commercial peers)
• Setting & evolving best practices
• An active, constructive voice in the VP leadership group

Typical Experiences:

Suggested, non-exhaustive experiences typical of a VP level role. You won’t be expected to have demonstrated every single item, however, as a senior leadership role it is essential to have spent considerable time in management and leadership positions.

• Leadership of other leaders
• Technical decision making and alignment across an entire organisation
• Senior people management - the wins, the misses
• Career progression / growing leaders
• Team culture - assessing setting and embedding culture
• Measurement driven approaches across people, process, tech
• Building high-performance teams
• Stakeholder management up to CxO - presenting, pitching, clarifying
• Bigger-picture thinking - zoom out and bring clarity in direction
• Creating and embedding processes (to support technology and people outcomes)
• Arbitrator of difficult prioritisation situations
• Working in ambiguous spaces bringing clarity to those around you
• Spotting problems before they become highly impactful - navigating and pitching accordingly

Benefits

• Flexible Working: Our flexible working approach offers a high degree of freedom and autonomy. Individuals are provided with the discretion to work remotely on a regular basis, with an expectation that a reasonable proportion of time is spent in the office to enhance in-person collaboration. If due to unique circumstances this doesn’t quite work, we are open to listening to what will.
• Time Off: In addition to the 8 statutory bank holidays, you will receive 29 holidays per year. Lyst’s holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March.
• Competitive Family Leave Package: This includes Enhanced Family Leave for those eligible, paid Time off for Dependents and Support for Fertility Treatment & Loss.
• Clothing Benefit: We want you to enjoy using the Lyst app and site as much as our customers, so we provide you with a clothing allowance to use on Lyst every year. This starts at £250 when you join and increases up to £1,000 with your length of service.
• Private Healthcare: Our healthcare provider is Vitality. Your health is important to us which is why we offer all employees a comprehensive healthcare scheme from the day you start.
• Training Allowance: We’re big on continuous learning and growth, so all employees are currently entitled to an annual training allowance of £1,000. This can be used to attend conferences, industry events, training courses and to purchase resources.
• Pension Scheme: Our pension provider is The People’s Pension. We offer a minimum employee contribution of 5% and 3% employer contribution.
• Eye Tests and Vouchers: Employees can make a saving on their eye test and glasses through our chosen provider. You’ll receive a free eye test every year and a discount towards glasses.
• Cycle-to-Work Scheme: Lyst will purchase a bicycle from your chosen retailer, you will then receive a voucher to pick up your bicycle from them.
• Transport Season Ticket Loan: Employees can apply for an interest free season ticket loan to support your travel to work.
• Social Events: Frequent company wide social events including Christmas & summer parties, sports days, themed drinks, quizzes, cook alongs, as well as smaller team socials. We also have plenty of interest based groups such as football, running club, book club, culinary and more.

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We recognise and celebrate the value and impact diversity brings to our company and are committed to ensuring this is a consistent focus, for which we are held to account. We are committed to treating all applicants fairly and equally, and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply for this role.