At Zeelo, we’re on a mission to revolutionize how frontline workers commute by delivering reliable, sustainable, and scalable transportation solutions. We partner with global leaders like Amazon, Barclays, and UPS, and we’re expanding after a successful Series B raise. If you’re passionate about building solutions, working in a scaling organization, and seeing the direct impact of your work—this is your seat on the bus.

About the Role:

As an Engineering Manager leading our platform transformation, you will be responsible for orchestrating our migration from a PHP monolith to a service-oriented architecture while simultaneously transforming our engineering practices and culture. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring both technical depth and people management expertise. You will lead a distributed team across the UK and offshore, driving technical excellence while building a high-performing, collaborative engineering culture during a period of significant change.

What You'll Do:

• Maintain hands-on involvement in architecture decisions and code reviews, contributing directly to critical path work when needed
• Lead the decomposition of our PHP monolith into services, defining extraction strategies, service boundaries, and migration patterns
• Establish architectural standards for service communication, data consistency, and distributed system patterns
• Define and implement API design standards, versioning strategies, and service contracts
• Drive decisions on technology choices for the new platform (service mesh, API gateways, event streaming, containerization strategies)
• Design data migration and dual-write strategies to ensure zero-downtime transitions
• Work with VP Product to create and maintain a multi-quarter roadmap for the platform transformation, with clear milestones and success metrics
• Establish metrics for transformation progress (services extracted, legacy code retired, system reliability, team velocity) and communicate progress to stakeholders at all levels.
• Build and lead a distributed team across UK and offshore, creating cohesion despite geographical boundaries
• Transform team practices from monolithic development to service ownership ("you build it, you run it")
• Establish clear communication patterns and documentation standards for asynchronous collaboration

Who you are: 

• Proven experience leading monolith-to-microservices transformations in production environments
• Deep hands-on experience with PHP and modern service-oriented technologies (containerization, Kubernetes, service mesh)
• Track record of managing distributed engineering teams across multiple time zones and cultures and integrating contractors as needed 
• Expertise in incremental migration strategies and running parallel systems safely
• Experience implementing DevOps practices and cultural transformation in traditional development teams
• Experience with cloud platforms (preferably AWS) and cloud-native architectures
• Strong background in API design, system integration patterns, and data consistency strategies
• Excellent communication skills with ability to influence both up and down the organization
• Demonstrated ability to make pragmatic technical decisions under uncertainty and time pressure
• Growth mindset with enthusiasm for leading teams through significant technical and cultural change

Why Zeelo?

• Mission-driven work: Every commute we power helps reduce CO₂ emissions and makes work more accessible especially in areas with limited public transport
• Global exposure: Be part of a 120+ person team across the US, UK, and Spain
• Best-in-class tech: Our platform is redefining how organizations move their people