Engineering Manager

👥 About the Engineering Team

We are a distributed team of around 40 engineers across the UK and EU who thrive on solving complex challenges together.

We are a highly cross-functional group, bringing together front-end, back-end, mobile, machine learning, and data expertise. We partner closely with Product, Design, and Science to build truly impactful member experiences. Within this ecosystem, the Scoring squad focuses on translating ZOE science with biological data into the personalised scores our members rely on.

We value curiosity, openness, and empowerment. We encourage continuous learning, sharing ideas, and shaping how we work—whether through experimenting with new technology or improving team efficiency. We're also proud of our team's diversity (40% female, 60% male) and believe that varied backgrounds, cultures, and lived experiences make us stronger, more creative, and better equipped to serve our global community.

🚀 About the role & impact

As the Engineering Manager for Scoring squad, you will report directly to an Engineering Director. You will serve as the technical anchor for your squad, bridging the gap between complex research and a seamless user experience.

At ZOE, EMs are technical leaders who stay close to the craft. You’ll drive the growth of your engineers while remaining hands-on in the delivery process. Beyond high-level architectural oversight, you’ll work 'under the hood' to ensure our 'science-to-app' pipeline is flawless—balancing people leadership with the active execution required to ship world-class products.

🌍 We are only considering applicants currently living in the UK or EU. All direct applicants must have the permanent right to work and live in the EU or UK. Please note that we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

✈️ This is a remote role. However, applicants must be open to traveling to London on a quarterly basis.

💻 Our cutting-edge stack - A taste of what you'll use!

• Languages: Kotlin, Python (for ML services)

• Frontend: React Native (our mobile home)

• Cloud: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

• Data/Infrastructure: PostgreSQL, Redis, Kubernetes, and Terraform

🎯 What you will do

• You will own the professional development of 3 engineers. This includes weekly 1:1 sessions to unblock work, quarterly check-ins to review performance, and bi-yearly performance reviews to align on long-term career goals and opportunities.

• Work in a tight-knit partnership with a Product Manager and Product Designer to shape the roadmap, ensuring technical feasibility is baked into every product discovery phase.

• Lead the system design and technical roadmap for the Scoring domain, ensuring our infrastructure can scale with our growing global member base.

• Stay close to the implementation by regularly participating in code reviews, ensuring best practices are met and knowledge is shared across the squad.

• Act as the technical point of contact for our Nutrition Science and Data Science teams, turning research-grade logic into high-performance software.

🌟 Who you are

• You have experience leading small engineering teams and haven't lost your "builder" mindset. You enjoy the challenge of solving complex technical problems alongside your team.

• You are deeply comfortable with distributed systems, API design, and data modelling. You can zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to catch a bug in a PR.

• You are passionate about developing people. You know how to deliver constructive feedback during 1:1s and how to navigate performance cycles to help your team level up.

• You thrive in cross-functional environments. You know how to speak the language of "Design" and "Product" to find the best solutions for our members.

• You are excited by the challenge of "productionizing" science—turning complex models into reliable, user-facing insights.

📢 What to Expect: The Hiring Process

We’ve designed our process to be transparent and reflective of the day-to-day of an Engineering Manager at ZOE. You’ll meet engineers, product partners, and leadership to ensure we’re the right fit for your career goals.

• Talent Acquisition Screen (30 min) - A conversational deep-dive into your background, your interest in ZOE’s mission, and the logistics of joining our distributed team.

• Hiring Manager Screen (45 min) - A technical and leadership synchronisation with an Engineering Director. We’ll discuss your experience building teams, productionising complex data, and how you balance "the builder mindset" with people management.

• The Remote Loop - Our final stage consists of four focused sessions designed to see how you collaborate and solve problems.

  • Live Coding Interview (60 min): We believe our leaders should stay close to the code. This session is back-end focused, and you can choose to code in Python, Kotlin, or TypeScript. You'll work through a hands-on exercise to demonstrate your problem-solving logic and technical communication.

  • System Design Interview (60 min): A deep dive into architecture. We’ll look at how you design scalable, reliable systems that bridge the gap between complex research data and a seamless user experience.

  • Leadership and Values Interview (60 min): Led by Engineering leadership and a Product Manager. This interview explores your leadership philosophy, how you navigate cross-functional trade-offs with Product/Design, and how you contribute to ZOE’s culture of curiosity and diversity.

🚀 Ready to thrive? We want to hear from you

The experience, skills, and attributes we’ve outlined are what we believe will help someone truly thrive in this role.

However, we understand that talent comes in many forms. If you are genuinely excited about ZOE's mission and this opportunity, please don't hesitate to apply—even if you don't meet every single requirement listed.

We fundamentally value potential and commitment above all else. We are dedicated to fostering growth and providing opportunities for you to learn and develop alongside us.