Job Specifications
Lyst is a global fashion shopping platform founded in London in 2010 and catering to over 160M shoppers per year. We offer our customers the largest assortment of premium & luxury fashion products in one place, curating pieces from 27,000 of the world's leading brands and stores. In 2025, Lyst joined Zozo, operators of Zozotown, the leading fashion e-commerce platform in Japan. This partnership marks a bold new era for Lyst, as we accelerate our vision and work together to transform the future of fashion shopping through AI and technology.
At Lyst, we obsess over the customer, providing a search & discovery experience which offers inspiration, fulfilment, and personalisation. We believe that fashion is amazing but shopping for fashion often isn't, and use our technology, data and creativity to bring more joy, greater choice and fewer fails. Our mission is to help fashion shoppers make better choices and help fashion partners find better audiences as the category-leading destination for every fashion shopper.
Role
We're looking for a Director of Engineering to join our Infrastructure tribe to lead Platform and IT at Lyst. These functions are responsible for the strategic roadmaps that help the wider organisation to build a product that customers love, and we want you to deliver the infrastructure and security strategy that will achieve this.
You'll be responsible for building out and executing roadmaps that deliver a cornerstone of our tech strategy - developing a platform that's secure, stable, operable and compliant. You'll work with the VP of Engineering for Data & Infrastructure to turn a strategic vision into scalable platform and security roadmaps, and run the 5-person Platform and IT squad structure that will make this a reality.
This will mean working with senior stakeholders in the wider company to lead on the rolling out and supporting of the infrastructure and tooling necessary to deliver the best development and deployment experience that makes security easy. You'll be responsible for ensuring a fast, reliable experience for customers, serving millions of images and terabytes of data every day across multiple continents.
Responsibilities
Define and execute strategic roadmaps
Collaborate with the VP of Engineering for Data & Infrastructure as well as senior leadership to develop the long-term strategic roadmap for the platform, security infrastructure, and internal IT systems. Own cross-squad and cross-org communication to refine workstreams and set expectations via forward planning.
Deliver technical infrastructure leadership
Own the design, operation, and continuous improvement of the website platform's foundational infrastructure, including deployment, CI/CD, observability, scalability, and reliability and lead the evaluation and implementation of new technologies that can improve platform performance, cost-efficiency, and developer productivity.
Implement security architecture and risk management
Oversee the security architecture of the platform, ensuring robust defenses against evolving threats, developing compliance frameworks and working with engineering leadership to understand how security can be "by default" within the platform and leading on a cybersecurity strategy.
Cultivate team leadership and growth
Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team drawing on their experience of platform engineering and IT support. Foster a nurturing and independent environment that encourages autonomy, accountability, responsibility and delivery.
Requirements
Proven track record of turning organisational needs into actionable, day-to-day deliverables
Ability to work with senior stakeholders and peers to develop strategic outcomes
Knowledge of a complex cloud provider environment managed with infrastructure-as-code
Proficient with Docker, Kubernetes, a CI/CD platform and a container orchestration system
Experience of implementing and managing data and security compliance
History of coaching and mentoring high-performance, autonomous teams
Experience of incident management workflows and expectation management
Proficient with project management software to help scope and refine roadmaps of work
Examples of vendor management with regards to financial budgeting and strategic fit
Excited to take on the big problems and encourage the qualities in people to solve them
Within 3 months you'll be:
Developing roadmaps with the VP of Engineering to deliver progress in the Platform, IT and Security strategies of the tribe
Line managing the 5-person Platform and IT squad structure to provide direct and indirect coaching and mentoring opportunities to help team members grow
Working with the engineering leadership team to understand the needs of our tech roadmap and how to support the org
Organising and participating in the squad ceremonies that turn the strategic plans into actionable, measurable progress
Collaborating with stakeholders across the organization who can help guide on organizational needs
About the Company
Lyst is a global Fashion Tech company and premium shopping app, founded in London in 2010 and catering to over 200M shoppers per year. We offer our customers the largest assortment of premium & luxury fashion items & products in one place, via an assortment of 8.5M+ items from over 17,000 of the world’s leading brands. We are a scale-up business with a current team size of c. 160 people in London, combining an agile mentality with a proven business model and over a decade of experience. This provides a balance between founda...
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