London
The RoleNewStore is at a pivotal moment. Make your application after reading the following skill and qualification requirements for this position. We are opening our platform to AI • letting retailers, partners, and AI agents build on top of what we have created, picking and combining the modules they need. As we make that transition, we are looking for a VP of Engineering to fully own the engineering function: the vision, the organisation, the culture, and the external presence.This is the most senior engineering role in the company. You will set technical direction, lead the engineering leadership team, represent NewStore in the market, and partner closely with the CEO and COO to shape how the business grows. You will own the how and the what • and you will respect and protect the engineering practices that make our culture what it is.This is a rare opportunity: a senior engineering leadership role at a company doing something genuinely hard, with a strong platform foundation, a clear strategic direction in agentic commerce, and an engineering culture built around practices that actually produce great software. The right person will have real ownership, real influence, and the chance to build something that matters.What You'll DoTechnical Vision & StrategyOwn the engineering vision and technical direction for NewStore • setting the architectural strategy, making the key technology bets, and ensuring the platform is built for where retail is going, not just where it is todayDrive the evolution of the platform toward a modular, agentic-ready architecture, • opening the platform to AI agents, decomposing the stack into clean API surfaces, and building the infrastructure that retailers and partners can build on top ofChampion AI-native ways of working within engineering itself, • agentic coding tools, AI-assisted code review, and automating the repetitive parts of delivery, • so the team lives the same AI-first mindset it's building into the product, not just shipping AI features to customersBring a genuine point of view on what agentic commerce means for physical retail, held with conviction but not fixed, • and build an engineering organisation that can adapt as fast as the market movesEngineering Leadership & OrganisationLead and develop the full engineering leadership layer, • Directors, senior managers, and functional leads across platform & product engineeringDesign the engineering org structure to execute on the product roadmap, scale with the business, and attract and retain the calibre of people NewStore needsOwn how performance is managed, • build, scale and restructure teams as the business needs it, set the standard for how teams are run and how underperformance gets addressed, and act decisively on people and structure, addressing issues while they're still small rather than letting them driftDrive hiring, retention, and professional development across the engineering organisation, • this is a builder role, not a maintainer roleOwn engineering-level communication to the company, • how the org talks about what it is building, what is shipping, and what is comingExternal Representation & PresenceBe the face of NewStore engineering, • speaking at industry events, briefing analysts and prospects, and building credibility in the retail technology and commerce infrastructure spacePartner with Marketing and the CEO to develop a strong engineering brand, • thought leadership, technical content, and conference presence that positions NewStore as a serious platform playerBuild and maintain senior, C-level relationships with our customers and partners, • someone who can talk technology directly with the people running our clients' businessesCross-functional & OperationalPartner with the CEO and COO on engineering strategy, headcount planning, and quarterly operating rhythm, • you are a member of the senior leadership team, not just the head of a functionWork closely with Product, Sales, and Customer Success to ensure engineering is aligned with commercial priorities and customer commitmentsPartner with the CISO to scale security, compliance and IT infrastructure in step with the business, ensuring secure engineering practices are baked into Engineering principles.What We're Looking ForEngineering LeadershipProven track record as a senior engineering leader, • you have owned technical direction at company level, built and scaled engineering organisations across multiple teams and locations, and developed other engineering leaders under youComfortable leading and sustaining a disciplined, practice-driven engineering culture, • teaching an organisation what's working and why (or vice versa), leading change and building consistency through constructive discussions at every level (1:1s, town halls, team meetings), and having the conviction to follow through on people and structure decisions, even when they take courageTechnical enough to reason through architecture problems and tradeoffs directly with the engineering team, without needing translation, • you don't need to be hands-on in the code, but you need to understand the implications well enough to bring your own judgmentComfortable being the most senior technical voice in the room, • in conversations with the board, with customers, with the CEO, • and able to hold your own in commercial and strategic leadership discussionsComfortable operating in a company of 100-300 people, • you know what it takes to move fast without breaking things, and you prefer building to maintaining, ideally with startup or scale-up experienceA demonstrated ability to spot industry-wide shifts early and act on them, • reading where the market is heading before it's obvious, and having the conviction to place bold technical bets ahead of the curve rather than catching up once everyone else already hasHands-on experience with AI-driven development, • agentic coding tools, AI-assisted review, • the ability to sell it within the engineering organizationExternal PresenceProven track record building and sustaining senior, C-level relationships with customers or partners, • not just comfort presenting to themA public presence, • conference talks, technical writing, industry visibility, • is a genuine plus, not a requirement on its own; it doesn't by itself mean someone can build and sustain senior, C-level relationships with customers and partnersComfortable representing the company externally, • with prospects, customers, partners, analysts, and the pressAbility to translate complex technical strategy into clear, compelling narrative for non-technical audiences including boards, commercial teams, and the marketTechnical DepthStrong grounding in modern software architecture, • multi-tenanted, cloud-native distributed systems, reliable transaction processing patterns for mobile applications, API design, platform decomposition, and event-driven patternsA genuine, well-formed point of view on agentic commerce and what AI agents mean for physical retail, • you can speak to this with conviction, not just familiarityFamiliarity with the retail technology or commerce platform space preferred, • POS, OMS, inventory management, or adjacent domainsExperience with AWS or comparable cloud infrastructure at scaleOur StoryNewStore gives the world's leading retail brands a modern platform to run their stores, • connecting POS, order management, inventory, fulfilment, clienteling, and payments into a single system that works the way retail actually works. It replaces the tangle of legacy systems most retailers have spent a decade stitching together, with something built for how commerce actually happens now: in-store, online, on a phone, wherever the customer is standing.Today, nearly 100 brands across 55 countries run on NewStore, from heritage names like Clarks to category-defining ones like AllSaints, GANNI and Sweaty Betty. These are brands with real technical requirements, no patience for downtime, and no interest in vendors who don't understand retail. Earning that trust at that scale is the hard part, and it's why the engineering behind this platform has to be genuinely excellent, not just good enough.And we're not standing still. We're in the middle of one of the most interesting architectural shifts in the company's history: opening the platform to AI agents and modular adoption, so brands can start with the piece they need and build outward from there, rather than a rip-and-replace of everything at once. It's a real bet on where commerce is heading, made early, and the VP joining us now gets to shape what that architecture actually becomes, not inherit someone else's decisions. xrnqpay Behind the platform is a global team spanning Boston, Berlin, Amsterdam, London and beyond • 30+ nationalities, a genuine diversity of backgrounds, and an engineering culture built on Extreme Programming that most companies talk about and few actually practice day to day. It's a company small enough that one person's technical judgment still shapes the whole platform, and ambitious enough that the work actually matters.If that sounds like somewhere you'd do your best work, we'd love to hear from you.
Chef & Cook
Waiters
Bar Staff
Retail
Kitchen Porter
Barista
Quick Service
Accounting & Finance
Animal Care
Art, Media, Design
Child Care
Cleaning
Construction & Trades
Customer Service
Driver & Delivery
Education
Engineering
Entertainment
Events & Promotion
Fashion
Health & Social Care
Host & Hostess
Information Technology
Legal
Management
Manufacturing
Office & Admin
Online Jobs
Sales & Marketing
Salon & Beauty
Science
Security
Sports & Wellness
Warehouse
Writing & Editing
Other
