Director of Software Engineering

We’re looking for humble, but ambitious, razor-sharp Engineering technical leader who can teach us a thing or two. We promise to return the favor. Like us, you take product development, cloud services research and platform engineering seriously; you’re passionate about technology and, even more so, about leadership. We embrace those who see things differently, aren’t afraid to experiment, and who have a healthy disregard for constraints. That’s where you come in.

We are currently seeking a Head of Engineering to help senior management drive technical vision, architectural guidance and provide leadership for a team of engineers in an innovative and fast paced environment. Our selection process will emphasize hands on engineering and other technical or architectural skills as well as leadership/management/SDLC process/organizational skills equally. The ideal candidate must be a master of their domain and be able to contribute as an individual contributor (software engineer and architect) half of the time. Furthermore, the ideal candidate must be able to improve SDLC and Scrum processes or inspire, champion and teach his / her team when the need arises. We are looking for a rare mix of intelligence, integrity, domain knowledge, verbal and written agility, and diplomacy which allows you to rapidly earn the trust of technically astute engineers and product astute product managers.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for championing persistence, business logic and other layers architectural and SDLC process strategy as well as the planning and successful execution of said strategy
• Effectively balance technical leadership and software engineering individual contributor responsibilities
• Directly or indirectly drive projects and provide architectural and technical leadership in an innovative and fast-paced environment
• Continually retrospect and drive innovation within the development process to ensure our software engineers execute at the highest possible level
• Hire, onboard, develop and manage engineers
• Manage Tech Debt management
• Responsible for execution of SDLC processes to include sprint pre-planning/planning, retros, demos, architecture and code reviews
• Work closely with the rest of the tech leads, data scientists, senior engineering leadership and product managers to ensure we're building awesome, feature-rich, scalable and secure product lines, products and features
• Work closely with the rest of the tech leads and senior engineering leadership team to ensure we're building highly reusable codebase
• Provide the mentoring and guidance to BE engineers. Create an environment for engineers to continually reach new heights within their career

Requirements: 

• 10 plus years solid experience in back end open source based technologies, including at least 4 - 5 years in Ruby or RoR cloud based ecosystems
• 4 plus years solid experience as a technical lead, including at least 2 years in large scale platform environment
• CS degree required or equivalent work experience
• Solid procedural and object oriented Software Engineering fundamentals
• 3 plus years of relevant experience managing fast-paced and dynamic Scrum team
• A proven track record of senior level software engineering and architecture accomplishments in a high-capacity, large-scale, internet-based product platform
• Capable of technical deep-dives, yet verbally and cognitively agile enough to hold their own in a strategy discussion with senior technical or product leadership
• Comfortable recruiting a team of very bright, experienced engineers capable of working on projects and at scale unlike any other they've encountered
• Very experienced with Agile / Scrum methodologies
• Outstanding communication skills, both written and oral
• Expert understanding of RoR framework

• Solid understanding of AWS services
• Solid experience with containerized applications and serverless functions

• Strong understanding of and experience with testing practices
• Strong automation and CI / CD experience
• Pivotal Tracker or Jira, Docker, CI/CD, GitHub tools experience, some would say you are a master
• If I asked your previous team members about you, they would say you were a great leader and even better contributor. They would also very much welcome an opportunity to work for you once again

BENEFITS

• Our culture is a cross between serious business and quirky startup; as we’ve grown from $0.5m to $45m in less than 4 years.
• We want team players, who roll up their sleeves, are open to being challenged and also understand the importance of respect, integrity and can that balance that with irreverence, cheekiness and a brand that aspires to do away with the taboo of being a “boring” software company.
• Most importantly, any role in Engineer.ai is like joining our family.
• Generous Vacation
• Medical, Dental, Vision Benefits