Senior Shop Manager (Cologne) (m/f/d)
● Now hiring · Marketing · Cologne
Senior Shop Manager (Cologne) (m/f/d)
Own live online shops end to end: the daily changes, the campaign and event updates, the testing, and the customer journey that runs through all of it. You are the person who decides what ships, and who proves it worked.
About the role
Our Shop Management team keeps a large portfolio of online shops running, tested and improving every day. We are looking for an experienced senior person to join it and set the standard: someone the team looks to, learns from and moves faster because of.
You take end-to-end ownership of defined shops and projects: daily changes, campaign and event updates, asset implementation, testing and QA, and the coordination with Product, Development, Analytics and Creative that makes any of it ship. A core part of the work is structured testing: building a thesis, setting up A/B tests, and acting on what the numbers show. You are also expected to use AI to work faster and smarter, as a repeatable process rather than a one-off experiment.
The Customization Group is a global leader in mass customization and print-on-demand e-commerce, manufacturing up to 2.5 million personalized products daily across production sites in Germany, Poland, the USA and Latvia, and reaching customers through 20+ online shops and 1,000+ partner stores: 750+ people, 40+ nationalities, 10 locations.
In a nutshell -you run live shops end to end, you test what works, and you use AI to keep the whole portfolio moving.
At a glance
Location
Cologne, Germany
On-site (some flexibility)
Team
Shop Management
within Marketing
Scope
Defined shops, end to end
shared & rotated
Pay
Discussed in call
shared in first call
Experience
Senior
3–5 yrs shop / project / product
Start date
ASAP
flexible for notice
The role in detail
What you will own, and what we need from you. Side by side, no surprises.
What you will do
Ordered by share of your week: running and testing live shops takes the largest slice, and AI runs through all of it.
→ Run the shops day to day.
Campaign and event updates, hero banners, discount logic, content and asset changes, and the coordination that gets them live on time.→ Own defined shops or projects end to end.
You hold the stakeholders, the timeline and the delivery quality, and you are the one people ask for a status.→ Launch new shops and enter new markets.
Stand up new Shopify shops, take existing ones into new markets, and own the localization that makes them work locally: language, currency, payment and regional detail.→ Support product launches.
New products and features go live cleanly because you helped set them up, test them and roll them out.→ Test before customers do.
QA, and A/B tests built on a clear thesis, then the follow-up actions the results call for.→ Improve conversion and the customer journey.
Look at where people drop off, form a view on why, and turn it into a prioritised list of improvements.→ Use AI to get more done.
Use AI to draft A/B test ideas, build QA checklists, adapt content across shops and speed up your reporting, so more tests ship and turnaround gets faster. You review everything before it goes live.
Requirements
The must-haves are genuine; the rest are strong pluses, not gates. If most of these describe you, apply.
Must have
→ Structured, delivery-focused background.
3–5 years in e-commerce shop management, online project management, product ownership or a comparable role.→ Ownership of complex projects.
A track record of running cross-functional projects and delivering many different tasks on short timelines.→ Testing and conversion thinking.
Comfort with A/B tests, QA and acting on data.→ You already work with AI.
You use AI tools day to day to work faster and better, on analysis, drafting, QA and reporting, and you check what they give you before it goes anywhere.→ A hands-on mindset.
You make the call and then you do the work, rather than passing it on.→ Negotiation-level English.
You work daily with teams in several countries.
Nice to have
→ Shopify, hands-on.
Direct experience running or launching Shopify shops is a strong plus, since new shops are moving onto it.→ An eye for UX.
An inclination toward UX and customer journeys. Formal UX experience is not needed: you can build and learn it on the job with data and AI support.→ Multi-market and localization.
You have taken a shop or product into a new market before, including the localization that goes with it.
Why this role, why now
What you get to work with, not what we want from you.
Ownership
Shops, not tickets
You get named shops and projects to own end to end: the decisions, the stakeholders and the delivery. As the most experienced person on the team, you set the standard and pull the work forward: leading by how you work, not by managing people.
End-to-endNamed scope
Scale
A real portfolio
20+ online shops, several shop systems, and a migration to Shopify underway. The scope is broad and the work is varied, so no two weeks look quite the same.
20+ shopsShopify migration
Testing
Decisions backed by data
A/B testing sits at the centre of the job. You build a thesis, run the test, and let the numbers settle the argument, then you ship the change.
A/B testingConversion
AI at work
Build the process, not the demo
Not AI for show. AI that gets real work done: more test ideas, faster QA, quicker reporting, content adapted across shops in a fraction of the time, always checked by you before it ships.
Reusable workflowsHuman review
Who we are looking for
This role rewards a structured operator with genuine AI fluency. Here is the honest test.
You will thrive here if
→ You work in a structured way and enjoy delivering many different tasks on a tight timeline.
→ You would rather own the outcome than be handed the task list, and you naturally set the pace for those around you.
→ You reach for AI to save a day, then check what it gave you before anyone else sees it.
→ You enjoy sitting between commercial and technical teams and translating in both directions.
Probably not a fit if
→ Your background is mainly digital marketing (SEA, paid social, performance). This is a shop operations and project role, not a marketing-channel one.
→ You want to set direction and hand execution to someone else. This is a hands-on role.
→ You prefer one product to go deep on. You will hold several shops at once and switch between them regularly.
→ Fast, manual, detail-heavy execution is not something you enjoy. A real part of the work is exactly that.
Pay & benefits
No guessing games on pay. You get the full range in the first call, before any interview, and where you land in it comes down to what you have actually done, not how hard you negotiate at the end.
→ Real ownership
named shops, yours to run→ Senior seat
the most experienced person on a small team→ AI tooling
access to the tools you need to do the job→ International team
40+ nationalities across 10 locations→ Local benefits
paid leave and local perks per your contract
How we hire
Short and straight. Two conversations and a decision: you always know who you are meeting and what each step is for.
1
Intro
Recruiter screening & call
A first call with the recruiter: the role, the team, the pay range and what you are looking for. We cover compensation here, not later.
You meetTalent team
2
Interview
Hiring manager & task
A conversation about your shop and project track record and how you work, plus a short practical task on a real customer journey.
You meetThe hiring manager
3
Decision
Offer
A decision and an offer, with feedback either way.
OutcomeOffer
You will always know where you stand. We reply to every application within 5 working days, give feedback at every stage even when it is a no, and we never ghost.
Ready to apply?
No cover letter needed. Send a short CV and a few lines on the shop, launch or project you are proudest of: what you owned, what shipped, and what it changed. That tells us more than two pages ever could, and we can talk it through in the first call.
