Head of Engineering, Wattpad
$240-280k
More information about location
3+ days a week in office (Downtown Toronto, ON)
Platform for sharing original writing
Open for applications
Platform for sharing original writing
101-200 employees
Open for applications
$240-280k
More information about location
3+ days a week in office (Downtown Toronto, ON)
101-200 employees
Company mission
Wattpad's mission is to create a world where everyone's story can be heard, and anyone can belong.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering teams and senior engineering leaders
- Experience leading a multi team engineering organization across areas engineering, infrastructure, and data
- Strong technical depth and architectural judgment, with the ability to credibly challenge senior engineers and technical leaders
- Experience leading or partnering closely with Data Engineering and a strong understanding of modern data platforms, pipelines, architecture, and analytics infrastructure
- Demonstrated experience improving engineering operating practices, including planning, estimation, technical roadmapping, delivery, ownership, and incident response
- Strong people leadership and coaching skills, with experience developing engineering managers and senior technical leaders
- Proven ability to make sound decisions in ambiguous environments, evaluate tradeoffs, and move teams from problem identification to resolution
- Strong cross functional leadership skills and experience partnering closely with Product, Design, Data, and other business functions
- Experience leading through organizational or technical change while maintaining team engagement and delivery
- No specific degree, license, or professional certification is required. Equivalent practical experience is valued
- Don’t meet all the requirements? Studies show women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs if they do not meet all the qualifications. Therefore, in an effort to build a more diverse workplace, we encourage you to apply anyways. You might actually be the right person or you may be a good fit for a number of other openings we currently have
Desirable
- Strong technical judgment, with the ability to challenge assumptions and help teams make better architectural and systems decisions
- A track record of creating engineering rigor through stronger planning, decision making, accountability, and operational discipline without adding unnecessary process
- A proactive problem solving mindset, with experience moving teams from identifying problems to developing options, recommendations, and solutions
- Strong leadership leverage, with demonstrated success developing engineering managers and senior technical leaders and increasing autonomy across the organization
- Experience building collaborative engineering cultures where Engineering operates as an integrated partner with Product, Design, Data, Content, Trust & Safety, and the broader business
What the job involves
- Our Engineering team builds and operates the systems that power Wattpad’s reader and writer experiences across mobile and web
- The team works across client engineering, platform, data, infrastructure, safety, monetization, and the technical foundations that support discovery, personalization, community, and content intelligence
- We’re building a culture where engineers are deeply connected to the problems we’re solving and the impact their work has on our users and the business
- We want teams that are proactive, collaborative, and comfortable making decisions, solving problems, and moving with urgency
- Engineers are expected to work closely with Product, Design, Data, Content, and Trust & Safety, bringing technical perspective into the problem early rather than operating as a separate delivery function
- We value strong technical judgment, thoughtful tradeoffs, clear ownership, continuous learning, and a mindset of “we can figure this out
- ” The opportunity for this leader is to help us continue strengthening that culture and build an engineering organization that combines technical excellence with speed, accountability, and strong cross functional partnership
- Lead and develop the engineering leadership team across architecture, client engineering, platform, and data engineering; building on the strengths and momentum already in place
- Continue strengthening engineering delivery, planning, estimation, and technical roadmapping as we evolve how our teams work and build together
- Shape the technical direction of Wattpad alongside senior technical leaders, ensuring our architecture and systems can support both the experiences we’re building today and where the platform needs to go next
- Strengthen our Data Engineering capabilities and foundations to support a future increasingly powered by personalization, content intelligence, experimentation, and AI
- Help teams make strong, timely technical decisions and thoughtful tradeoffs between speed, scalability, complexity, and long term maintainability
- Build an engineering culture where teams are proactive problem solvers, bring forward recommendations, and feel ownership for moving problems through to resolution
- Develop strong engineering leaders who can operate with increasing autonomy, make good decisions, and grow high performing teams
- Continue evolving our engineering operating practices so teams have the clarity, communication, and rigor they need to move quickly and respond effectively when issues arise
- Deepen the partnership between Engineering, Product, Design, Data, Content, and Trust & Safety so teams shape problems and solutions together from the start
- Foster a culture of technical excellence, curiosity, accountability, urgency, collaboration, and continuous learning
Our take
Content is king and Wattpad has managed to create a platform that aggregates the most loved original writing content in the world, turning the traditional publishing industry on its head.
Where authors used to submit drafts to dozens of publishing houses in the hope of getting some eyeballs on their work, Wattpad opened up the process to millions of young authors by letting them easily submit their work, and fostering a community around their software that offers feedback and help.
The e-reading platform is now looking to double down on its strategy of taking its user-generated fiction and turning it into successful intellectual property upon which original series and movies can be based. However, a significant challenge for Wattpad is in producing original, marketable content from its platform, given the popularity of fanfiction, stories which are based on existing intellectual property.
Another challenge for Wattpad is the current economic conditions, which have affected much of the tech sector and are not sparing digital publishing. Having shelved bold plans for the future, it also laid off 15% of its workforce in March 2023. Having realigned for its current business needs, however, it is now well placed to weather the current market downturn.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jan 2018
$51m
LATE VC
Apr 2014
$46m
SERIES C
Total funding: $117.8m
Company benefits
- Full health benefits
- Career development & Mentorship opportunities
- RRSP matching
- Generous parental Leave top-up
- Flexible hours
- Regular hackathons
- Healthy snacks & drinks
- Your choice of hardware
- Monthly work-from-home allowance
- Beautiful offices in Toronto and Halifax
- Easy access to transit
Company HQ
St. Lawrence, Toronto, ON
Leadership
Allen lau
(Co-Founder)Lau attended University of Toronto where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering followed by a master's in the same subject. Thereafter he briefly worked as a software engineer for Brightspark before founding his first notable company, Tira Wireless, a mobile development startup. He is also the co-founder of Two Small Fish Ventures, a fund that invests in Toronto and Waterloo-based early-stage internet companies with strong network effects.
Ivan Yuen
(Co-Founder)Prior to Wattpad, Ivan co-founded FeedM8 and served as the company’s CTO. Before that he was one of the first employees of Tira Wireless, where he helped grow the technical team and developed new and emerging wireless technologies. Ivan graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Engineering and also earned an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.
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