Engineering Manager, Business Systems - Remote (to GMT +2) / Dublin
About Phorest
Phorest Salon Software powers over 11,000 hair and beauty salons in Ireland, UK, Germany, Australia, Finland, USA, Canada, UAE and Netherlands. The platform processes 7 million appointments a month for hair and beauty consumers and is the number 1 salon software brand for premium independent salons in those markets. 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: from the in‑salon software desktop application to Phorest Go (the native staff application), the online bookings website, and custom native apps per salon.
In a typical month, Phorest processes 3 million appointments, we send over 3 million SMS and 4 million emails, process 200k online bookings per month and over 150 custom built white‑label native apps.
Opportunity
We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Business Systems team within the Foundations pillar at Phorest. This is an exciting time to join, as we advance one of our key strategic imperatives – enhancing our business systems to enable Phorest to scale with greater operational excellence. Your mission: enable scale not through headcount, but through smarter systems and automation. You’ll lead a team that builds tools and integrations connecting Phorest’s internal and customer‑facing systems, laying the foundation for scalable, data‑driven growth, reducing manual work and improving the quality and consistency of our operational processes.
What You’ll Do
Lead & develop the team: manage and mentor a team of backend and systems engineers focused on building and maintaining internal systems and integrations. Create an environment of continuous learning, accountability, and collaboration. Support career growth through clear expectations, feedback, and coaching.
Drive system & process improvement: lead development of scalable internal tools and integrations that improve how Phorest operates day‑to‑day. Partner with cross‑functional stakeholders (Operations, CX, Finance, Product) to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for automation. Translate business problems into technical solutions that reduce manual work, improve data accuracy, and increase visibility.
Provide technical leadership: guide architectural and technical decisions, ensuring systems are robust, maintainable, and scalable. Stay hands‑on enough to understand the team’s challenges and unblock where needed (around 30–40% of your time). Promote best practices in code quality, testing, observability, and security.
Balance short‑and‑long‑term impact: help the team balance immediate operational needs with longer‑term system improvements. Define success metrics for internal tooling and system changes, ensuring measurable business outcomes. Collaborate with your Product Manager to prioritise initiatives that move the needle.
Foster cross‑functional collaboration: act as a trusted partner to regional and functional leaders, ensuring technical solutions align with business objectives. Communicate clearly with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, creating shared understanding of priorities and trade‑offs.
Build for scale & reliability: ensure internal tooling, data pipelines, and integrations can scale in line with Phorest’s growth. Drive standardisation, reducing system fragility and improving operational resilience.
Who You Are
5+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in a team leadership or management role.
Comfortable leading through ambiguity – creating clarity where paths aren’t always well‑defined and guiding teams through evolving priorities with confidence.
Strong people‑management skills: experienced in coaching, mentoring, and developing engineers.
Proven ability to lead engineering teams working on business systems, internal tools, or backend integrations.
Technical background in object‑oriented design, preferably Java or similar JVM languages.
Experience designing and scaling API‑driven or event‑based systems.
Comfortable working in a cross‑functional environment – collaborating with operations, CX, finance, or product teams.
Excellent communication skills: able to translate technical detail into compelling narratives that bring people both technical and non‑technical alike on the journey with you to achieve real business impact.
Pragmatic and outcome‑driven: you focus on the 90% solution that delivers impact faster.
Admittedly a leader experienced in leading teams through change, fostering resilience in a fast‑paced and evolving environment.
Preferred Experience
Experience with Salesforce, Zendesk or similar enterprise/business systems.
Familiarity with data integration, ETL pipelines, or system synchronisation across multiple tools.
Exposure to internal automation platforms or workflow orchestration.
Experience managing remote or geographically distributed teams.
Previous work in SaaS, customer success, or operations‑heavy environments.
Benefits