Job Description — Staff Engineer, eCommerce

About you

The person we appoint will be an experienced engineer, a fan of agile and lean

practices, passionate about technology, and experienced in leading large

initiatives with teams of engineers. To be considered, you’ll demonstrate you are:

• Passionate about solving big technology problems

• A good mentor and coach for engineers of all experience levels

• Experienced as an engineer across a range of languages and tools to support your team

• Delivery‑focused, keeping our internal and external customers in mind

• Open, honest and proactive in communicating with your team, colleagues and leadership, and comfortable collaborating with stakeholders in working groups

• Familiarity with commerce platform components: CMS, PIM, catalog, checkout, payments

Team intro

You’ll join our eCommerce engineering group, the pre‑order domain that powers browsing, buying and account experiences for customers worldwide. Today the group includes squads such as Browse, Checkout, UFO (Upper Funnel Optimisation) and Build, partnering closely with Product and Design. This role reports to the Head of Engineering, eCommerce (Jonathon Lucas).

We are migrating from legacy PHP/Java services running on Kubernetes to a MACH‑aligned, cloud‑native stack on AWS with Next.js and serverless patterns.

Priorities include incremental cutovers, data synchronization, strong ADR governance, and improving developer experience to speed up safe delivery. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on increasing the impact and effectiveness of multiple teams. You’ll lead complex initiatives end‑to‑end, raise the technical bar, and shape the architecture and developer experience across our eCommerce domain. You will alternate between hands‑on deep technical work and high‑level strategy, and influence without line management.

How we work

Distributed-first: our eCommerce teams are largely UK-remote

We are currently hiring roles in Cape Town to expand capability and time‑zone coverage

For this Staff role: hybrid in Cape Town twice a week is expected.

Until we secure an office, this will be remote‑first with scheduled in‑person collaboration days

Async-first collaboration across time zones using Slack for day-to-day

comms, Zoom for live sessions, Miro for discovery and facilitation, and Notion as the source of truth for docs, specs and decision records

Clear written updates; use ADRs for key technical decisions

What you’ll do

• Provide technical leadership for key eCommerce initiatives across Browse, Catalog, Checkout, Pricing and Payments, aligning designs and roadmaps with business objectives and OKRs

• Design and evolve services and integrations in a cloud‑native, event‑driven architecture on AWS using API Gateway, Lambda, SNS/SQS, DynamoDB, and Step Functions where appropriate

• Shape our headless web stack with Next.js, React and TypeScript, deployed on Vercel (Edge Network, ISR/SSR), with service backends primarily in Node.js and Java

• Create clear technical artefacts: ADRs, system designs, sequence and data‑flow diagrams, and fitness functions

• Improve developer experience and reliability: CI/CD, observability, test strategy, SLOs and incident learning loops; infrastructure as code with Terraform

• Partner with Product and Design on discovery, prioritisation, and incremental delivery; frame trade‑offs and risks

• Uplift engineering quality via code and design reviews, pairing, and mentorship across squads

• Manage technical debt deliberately: establish remediation plans and ensure it doesn’t block speed or scalability

• Champion security, privacy, and compliance in designs and delivery workflows

• Contribute to shared platform capabilities and architectural governance so teams can ship safely and fast

Example initiatives you may lead

UFO — Brand discovery & product browsing migration: move upper‑funnel journeys off Classic by migrating content to Contentstack and product data to Salsify, restructure IA and navigation, deliver PLPs with filtering/sorting and improved search relevance, and implement SEO‑safe redirects and routing. Establish performance budgets and edge caching on Vercel, protecting organic visibility and Core Web Vitals while enabling localisation.

Build — Design experience migration: sequence the design, preview and proofing flow so real customer orders can be tested incrementally. Deliver saved projects and downloadable proofs, improve render quality and error‑prevention, and integrate the Build tool cleanly into PDP and Checkout so designs are visible and editable throughout.

Buy — Cart & Checkout consolidation: deliver a single international checkout across regions and customer types with discounts/promos, correct locale routing, and multiple PSPs. Implement idempotent payment handling and fraud integrations, migrate account and address book, and reach revenue‑driving parity so SOHO orders flow through the new platform with observability SLIs and clear rollback plans.

Responsibilities and accountabilities

Team

Responsibilities:

• Mentorship and development of engineers.

• Help highlight capability gaps and propose ways forward.

• Consistently align deep technical work to business strategy.

• Act as a bridge between engineering, product and stakeholders, communicating technical decisions and direction.

• Promote and uphold MOO values and a culture of innovation, collaboration and inclusivity across teams.

• Accountabilities: Ensure team alignment to technical strategy and how it ladders to business strategy. Resolve technical disagreements within and across teams. Identify and nurture high‑potential engineers for future leadership roles.

Delivery

Responsibilities:

• Lead the technical planning and execution of key initiatives, ensuring alignment to business objectives. Identify risks and implement mitigation strategies. Ensure deliverables meet quality, scalability and reliability standards. Do the glue work to bring the right people together and

• remove blockers.

• Accountabilities: On‑time delivery balancing speed and quality. Provide regular stakeholder updates on status, risks and mitigations. Drive continuous improvement to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Ensure architectural adherence and contribution to the wider plan and goals.

Technical architecture and developer experience

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to overall architecture, making strategic decisions that balance short‑term needs with long‑term goals. Ensure high standards for code quality and engineering practices. Work with teams to consistently remove blockers on the path to production.

• Accountabilities: Ensure architectural integrity across owned systems and components. Proactively manage technical debt so it doesn’t hinder future scalability or innovation. Drive innovation by adopting technologies and approaches that improve our speed to market.

Nice to have

• Experience with headless/MACH architectures, Next.js, React, infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform)

• Experience modernising legacy systems alongside building new capabilities