Vice President, Product Engineering

Overview

In this role you will shape Zapp’s product and engineering trajectory, turning opportunities into timely, high-quality products. You’ll partner with the Founder and Executive Team to set priorities, guide architecture, and lead cross-functional squads from idea to launch and iteration. You’ll build and scale a high-performing engineering function that balances speed, quality, and ownership. This is a hands-on leadership role at the heart of a fast-growing startup, focused on delivering impactful customer-centric technology.

Pay / Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity package
• Private Health Insurance (Bupa)
• Zapp Credit for testing the service
• Extended sick pay and parental leave pay
• 25 days annual leave (UK holidays excluded)
• Healthy lunch four days per week at HQ

Responsibilities

• Define product and technology direction with the Founder and Executive Team
• Translate priorities into a focused product and engineering roadmap
• Identify high-value problems and balance speed, scope, quality, and investment
• Ensure architecture supports near-term delivery and long-term ambitions
• Lead end-to-end product delivery from discovery to iteration
• Create a repeatable delivery rhythm and remove obstacles to ship initiatives
• Define success through customer, commercial, and operational outcomes
• Lead, develop, and scale a multidisciplinary engineering organisation
• Establish high standards and a culture of pace, simplicity, craftsmanship, and accountability
• Stay close to technology to guide architecture decisions and trade-offs
• Build reliable, secure, and scalable systems
• Attract, retain, and develop engineering talent
• Make AI and automation practical to improve customer and operations outcomes
• Collaborate with Data Science and Analytics to strengthen personalization and forecasting
• Evaluate emerging technologies with commercial judgment
• Partner with commercial, operations, data, finance, and other leaders
• Communicate priorities, decisions, progress, and risks to stakeholders
• Own opportunities and drive work to measurable results

Key requirements

• Significant software engineering experience with leadership at VP/Head/Engineering Director level
• Proven track record of driving digital products from idea to launch and iteration
• Experience delivering measurable customer, commercial, or operational impact
• Deep technical judgment in architecture, reliability, security, and development practices
• Strong product instincts and ability to frame ambiguous problems and trade-offs
• Experience building high-performing, multidisciplinary teams
• Experience operating complex, high-availability production systems in consumer/retail/logistics environments
• Ability to balance long-term thinking with urgency and hands-on execution
• Excellent communication with founders, executives, partners, and cross-functional teams
• High intellectual curiosity, low ego, strong ownership
• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field—or equivalent experience

• strong communication and stakeholder management
• ambition and ownership mentality
• customer-centric mindset
• architecture leadership
• reliability and security practices
• scalable systems design

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