Backend Engineering Director, Scribd

• At least 10 years of experience building and delivering software products
• 5+ years of engineering management experience running backend teams and experience managing managers for at least 2 years
• Strong record of thriving in a customer-obsessed product development environment with evidence of helping to define and influence overall product strategy
• Experience in building robust APIs, high-scale service oriented backend systems, and event streaming technology that are optimized around speed, velocity and safety of development
• An exceptional understanding of technology best practices, application security, and history of making tradeoffs based on current needs
• Proven track record of scaling a team in high-growth companies, not just in number of team members but also in developing team member capabilities and skills
• History of building accountability and success by setting measurable goals and metrics for your teams
• Ability to set strategic direction in working with senior executives, but also loves getting your hands dirty executing with the team
• Thrive in a fast-paced, rapidly-changing, high-growth environment
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal
• Demonstrated ability to understand and discuss technical concepts, prioritize and evaluate opportunistic new ideas with internal and external partners
• Proactive, solution-oriented mindset and approach to problem solving
• You have experience managing large scale backend teams
• You have experience with architectural migrations and tech debt reduction efforts
• You are a great manager and team builder
• You have experience mentoring and helping cultivate emerging leaders
• You communicate clearly and effectively with technical and non-technical audiences
• You are deep technically and can mentor and guide all levels of engineers
• You're self-directed towards generating outcomes vs output
• You care about building highly efficient teams that can move fast, learn & iterate quickly

Desirable

• Lead the overall planning, development, and deployment for backend systems that power our web and mobile applications
• Mentor & grow a 15+ distributed, diverse engineering team which also includes managers
• Define and drive architectural strategy to enable a world class customer experience that includes quality, scalability, and resilience as default characteristics
• Partner closely with cross-functional teams including product management, design, performance marketing, business analytics and others throughout the business to build a clear vision & prioritized roadmap for the backend organization
• Formulate and execute process and organizational improvements to enhance overall effectiveness & velocity
• Define how we approach engineering scale & technical debt reductions, driving for speed and efficiency in our development processes
• Determine OKRs, project planning and resource requirements to accomplish projects and support users
• Help identify issues and blockers that may delay the launch or impede the success of projects or capabilities and work with partners to communicate effectively, assess alternatives, and take action to resolve
• Manage engineering morale, retention, culture, and performance
• Provide career development, coaching, mentorship and sponsorship, and cultivate emerging leaders