Catawiki
Engineering Manager
Salary
Job description
At Catawiki, every day brings the extraordinary! Whether it’s Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 Car, a Woolly Mammoth’s Skeleton, Lady Gaga's Jumpsuit or Usain Bolt’s running shoe, we encounter exceptional objects every day.
We’re a one-of-a-kind marketplace for buying and selling special objects. Each week, more than 100,000 unique items are auctioned, all carefully curated by our passionate in-house experts.
Having sold over 25 million unique objects, our mission is to become the world’s most popular destination for special objects. As a growing, diverse and sustainable scale-up, we proudly live by three core values. If these values resonate with you, we’d love to explore how you can join us.
- Taking ownership and driving impact
- Being open to change and feedback
- Being passionate about our mission and our customers.
Your Mission
As an Engineering Manager in our Fulfilment domain, you will lead a cross-functional team focused on improving the post-order journey - especially the shipping and delivery experience for our buyers and sellers. Shipping is one of the most critical and friction-prone parts of our marketplace. Your mission is to build a strong, empowered engineering team and shape the technical foundations that make our fulfilment experience reliable, scalable and customer-centric.
You won’t be coding full-time, but you will own the technical direction, guide architectural decisions, and ensure we build systems that enable faster, safer product delivery. At the same time, you’ll grow engineers into high performers and future leaders. This is a high-impact role at the heart of our marketplace experience.
What You’ll Do
Your work as an Engineering Manager will shape how Catawiki evolves the auction journey, helping the team deliver reliable, thoughtful, and high-impact experiences for bidders and buyers, leading and growing a high-performing engineering team, creating a culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvement.
- Drive technical direction and system ownership for the Fulfilment domain, ensuring scalable, maintainable architecture that supports long-term product ambitions.
- Improve the post-order customer experience, reducing shipping friction and increasing reliability across the buyer journey.
- Partner closely with Product and UX to shape the roadmap, translate business priorities into technical strategy, and deliver customer-centric solutions.
- Enable faster and higher-quality delivery, establish engineering standards, improve processes, and introduce measurable quality metrics.
- Navigate ambiguity in a scale-up environment, balancing immediate delivery needs with strategic platform improvements.
What You’ll Bring
You measure what matters, stay close to the details when needed, and know when to guide versus when to step in. You are comfortable balancing technical leadership with people leadership, and you care deeply about the team, the systems, and the outcomes they own. Next to this, you have:
- Strong software engineering foundation with 5–10 years of experience.
- Proven people leadership experience (1-2+ years) growing, coaching, and developing engineers, including managing performance and career progression.
- Experience working in cross-functional product teams, partnering effectively with Product, UX and business stakeholders.
- Technical decision-making confidence, guiding teams through architectural trade-offs and complex system challenges.
- Ownership mindset, able to tackle problems end-to-end and drive solutions forward in ambiguous situations.
- Marketplace, e-commerce or scale-up experience (nice to have), particularly in logistics, shipping, or post-order flows.
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, influencing across teams and seniority levels.
If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t perfectly match every requirement, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might be exactly who we’re looking for.
How We Work
- You will work with engineering teams based across Amsterdam and Lisbon, being part of a growing engineering and product hub in Portugal.
- You will collaborate closely with cross-functional stakeholders across product, design, data, and commercial teams.
- You will balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution.
- You will operate in an environment that values clarity, ownership, and measurable impact.
Where You’ll Be
This is a Hybrid role based in Lisbon. You will work from our Lisbon Office a minimum of 2 days per week.
In Return
You'll be part of an enthusiastic, highly motivated team of 850+ Catawikians.
- A competitive Annual Gross Base Salary depending on your level, competencies, and overall experience.
- Meal Allowance Card stipend per working day, in addition to salary.
- Health Insurance from day 1 (including dental coverage), with access to multiple hospitals and clinics and a vast wellness network.
- A Work From Home Allowance to help with your monthly household bills.
- Commuting between your home and our office is covered by Catawiki.
- Amazing Office right in the centre of Lisbon.
Why You'll Love Working with Us
- Create a visible impact by working at scale in a global organisation serving millions of customers across 80+ categories. In our flat structure, every role has a broad scope and directly impacts both our customers and the business.
- Learn and grow through our Learning & Development initiatives, including clear development plans and mentorship programmes to support your career progression.
- A culture of connection defines us. We’re a passionate, diverse team of 800+ Catawikians representing 60+ nationalities. We foster an inclusive and queer-friendly environment where everyone is encouraged to bring their full self to work.
- Celebrate life’s moments with us. You’ll receive a €100 Catavoucher when you join, a €50 Catavoucher on your birthday, and an extra day off each year to “Pursue Your Passion”. We also offer additional leave for key work anniversaries and important life events. Benefits may vary by location.
Our Offices and Way of Working
Our vibrant offices in Amsterdam, Paris and Lisbon are designed to inspire collaboration. Most Catawikians operate in a hybrid setup, combining office-based and remote work, with a minimum of two days per week in the office, unless a role is explicitly stated as fully remote or fully office-based.
Interested?
Apply with an English CV and Cover Letter. By applying, you agree to Catawiki’s Applicant Privacy Policy. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
