Engineering Manager Trust Detection

Company Description

Depop is a peer-to-peer circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy sell and discover secondhand fashion. Our mission is simple: to make fashion circular by making secondhand as exciting and rewarding as buying new.

Founded in 2011 Depops diverse community has helped move resale into the mainstream where buying secondhand is no longer an alternative but how people of different ages now engage with fashion. Today more than 56 million registered users come to Depop to find great value express their own personal style and give clothes a longer life. We believe that everything you want already exists and our role is to help people discover it.

Powered by a team of over 500 people our company is headquartered in London with offices in New 2021 Depop became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy - the global marketplace for unique and creative goods - and continues to operate as a standalone company. For more information visit

We aim to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome no matter who they are or where theyre from. Just as our platform connects people globally we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users.

Were proud to be an equal opportunity employer providing employment opportunities without regard to age ethnicity religion or belief gender identity sex sexual orientation disability pregnancy or maternity marriage and civil partnership or any other protected status. Were continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.

AI Disclosure: We use AI tools (Google Gemini) to help our team source and review applications for roles with a high volume of applications. These tools assist our recruiters in identifying great talent but do not replace human decision-making. At Depop every hiring decision is made by a human.

If due to a disability you need adjustments to complete the application please let us know by sending an email with your name the role to which you would like to apply and the type of support you need to complete the application to .

Company Description

Depop is a peer-to-peer circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy sell and discover secondhand fashion. Our mission is simple: to make fashion circular by making secondhand as exciting and rewarding as buying new.

Founded in 2011 Depops diverse community has helped move resale into the mainstream where buying secondhand is no longer an alternative but how people of different ages now engage with fashion. Today more than 56 million registered users come to Depop to find great value express their own personal style and give clothes a longer life. We believe that everything you want already exists and our role is to help people discover it. From everyday essentials to vintage and designer finds Depop brings together a wide range of affordable styles in one place. Its a marketplace where anyone can clear out their wardrobe or build a business explore their style and take part in a more circular way to shop.

As part of eBay were continuing to invest in our platform our people and our mission to build a more circular future for fashion.

Powered by a team of over 500 people our company is headquartered in London with offices in New York. For more information visit our News Room here. Just as our platform connects people globally we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.

We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users. Were proud to be an equal opportunity employer providing employment opportunities without regard to age ethnicity religion or belief gender identity sex sexual orientation disability pregnancy or maternity marriage and civil partnership or any other protected status.

Were continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have. If due to a disability you need adjustments to complete the application please let us know by sending an email with your name the role to which you would like to apply and the type of support you need to complete the application to

AI Disclosure We use AI tools (Google Gemini) to help our team source and review applications for roles with a high volume of applications. These tools assist our recruiters in identifying great talent but do not replace human decision-making. At Depop every hiring decision is made by a human.

The Role

Depop is looking for a UK-based Engineering Manager to lead our Trust Detection team.

Trust Detections team goal is to catch the bad content and behaviour before the Depop community gets hurt by it. That means fake listings phishing messages counterfeits and the people behind them.

Were a team of ML Scientists and Backend Engineers. We build train and maintain our own models and bring in third-party tools where theyre the better fit. We also build the platform that runs it all in production and acts on what it detects. We prioritise automation as much as we can so moderators can focus on the hard calls. Every decision a model or a human makes becomes training data for the next one.

Our signals are used across Depop in listings search chat and account security. We want to catch bad actors at the account level rather than one listing at a time step in in real time and offer our risk scores as a service other teams can build on.

Youll manage the backend engineers on the team and form its leadership trio alongside the ML Manager and Product Manager. Together youll set direction shape the roadmap and turn the teams mission into shipped measurable impact.

What youll do

Lead and grow the team

• Manage coach and develop a team of Backend Engineers through 1:1s feedback career growth and performance.
• Build an inclusive high-trust culture where ML and Backend Engineers work as one team not two disciplines handing work over a wall.
• Shape the teams hiring onboarding and ways of working as it grows.

Be one third of the leadership trio

• Partner with the ML Manager and Product Manager to set the teams direction priorities and roadmap.
• Own team delivery and health while the ML Manager leads on modelling approach and the PM on problem and outcome. Hold each other to a shared set of goals.
• Own the technical direction of the trust detection platform working with staff engineers and partner teams to deliver it.
• Turn strategy into a clear plan: break down ambiguous problems sequence the work and keep momentum high.

Drive delivery and engineering quality

• Help the team take models from experiment to reliable production systems including real-time inference monitoring and safe rollouts.
• Stay close to architecture and technical trade-offs especially as we build shared risk-scoring services used by other teams.
• Lift engineering standards across both disciplines: testing observability cost and operational excellence for systems that act on users.
• Make risks dependencies and decisions visible early so the right support and alignment are in place.

Work across the business

• Collaborate and influence Trust & Safety Operations Policy Legal Data and partner product teams who consume the teams signals.
• Help the team balance user safety fairness to genuine sellers compliance obligations and speed and explain those trade-offs clearly.
• Champion how we measure success: harm prevented model precision and recall and how often decisions are overturned.

What were looking for

Were looking for an engineering leader who combines technical depth product judgement and inclusive people leadership.

Youll be a strong fit if you bring:

• Experience managing and developing engineers ideally including senior engineers.
• A strong software engineering background with the confidence to engage in architecture and technical trade-offs.
• Experience leading teams that run production systems with a focus on reliability and quality.
• Experience working with or a real appetite to learn how to lead ML or data-heavy teams. You dont need to build models but you should be curious about how they get from notebook to production.
• Clear ownership of team health and delivery and the ability to create momentum in ambiguous fast-changing problem spaces.
• A collaborative style in a shared-leadership model: youre comfortable with healthy disagreement and making decisions together.
• The confidence to challenge engineers ML product partners and stakeholders constructively.
• Motivation to protect people and help build trusted online communities.

We know great Engineering Managers dont always match every line of a job description. If this role excites you wed love to hear what youd bring.

Helpful experience not dealbreakers

We dont expect one person to bring all of this. Adjacent experience and curiosity are just as valuable.

• ML in production: MLOps model serving real-time inference feature pipelines retraining or monitoring for drift.
• Detection and risk: trust and safety fraud abuse spam content moderation or marketplace integrity.
• Platform thinking: building shared services or APIs that other teams depend on.
• Measurement: experimentation shadow testing golden-set evaluation or other ways of proving a models real-world impact.
• Cross-functional delivery: working with Operations Policy Legal Compliance or Security partners.

Whats in it for you

Youll lead a young high-impact team at an exciting point. Trust Detection is a growing team with a lot still to build so theres plenty of room to make a big impact and grow with it. Youll shape how we scale: catching bad actors at the account level acting in real time and building a risk platform the rest of Depop relies on. Youll work where ML engineering and real user impact meet with strong support from your trio partners the wider Trust & Support group and engineering leadership.

Additional Information

Health Mental Wellbeing

• PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa
• Subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space
• Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support
• Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting

Work/Life Balance:

• 25 days of annual leave with the option to carry over up to 5 days
• Impact hours: Up to 2 days of additional paid leave per year for volunteering
• Fully paid 4-week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop to give you a chance to recharge or do something you love.
• Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex Office-Based and Remote options *role-dependent
• All offices are dog-friendly
  

Family Life:

• For birth parent: 20 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees
• For non-birth parents: 12 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees
• IVF leave shared parental leave and paid emergency parent/carer leave

Learn Grow:

• Twice-yearly development chats and yearly performance reviews
• Learning budget
• Upskilling our employees with company-wide training workshops materials and resources

Your Future:

• Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary)
• Pension matching up to 6% of full base salary with Aviva

Depop Extras:

• In-office Depop Shop (thats free!) and a packing station with free delivery.
• Special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards!