VP of Engineering

Job Description

Who We Are:

Every year, online shoppers in the US lose 50 billion dollars in unclaimed money, and we’ve developed an elegant way of returning that money back to our customers. With over 3 million active users, our mission is to advocate for consumers financial best interest.

Our simple customer experience means sophisticated back-end decision-making on their behalf. Earny acts as a personal assistant that automatically gets consumers money back on almost every purchase. Earny uses low-latency price tracking to identify the lowest possible prices, and obtains refunds using credit card price protection.

We are headquartered in Santa Monica, CA and are backed by top investors including Mayfield, Science, Inc., Sweet Capital, Comcast Ventures. We’re currently looking for innovative and passionate people, who are eager to make a difference and play a vital role in Earny’s growth and success.

The Role:

The VP of Engineering will leverage their experience in technology leadership to set the technical vision and release cadence for the engineering team. This role will be responsible for creating the technical roadmap, fostering a strong engineering culture and increasing the product delivery velocity for the organization. You must be able to motivate and inspire team members to overcome obstacles and deliver highly scalable, state-of-the-art technology solutions. This position is based in Santa Monica and you will report directly to the CEO.

Job Responsibilities:

• Lead. Attract, hire & retain highly skilled engineers. Act as an expert advisor, coach, and mentor across the technology organization on latest engineering principles and practices. Assess skills & building career development plans for direct reports. Identify areas of improvement and conduct regular one-on-one meetings with engineers. Establish metrics and processes for team member assessment and improvement. Create and implement training programs for engineers, and implement processes to develop careers. Build a healthy engineering culture by planning and facilitating technical events and technical learning curriculums.
• Strategy. Work closely with the CTO and members of the engineering team to direct the development of the strategic technology vision and execute against the product and technical roadmap. Determine the long-term architecture of our platform and be responsible for implementing the company’s product development vision.
• Collaborate. Work closely with our Product team to ideate, scope, plan, estimate, coordinate, derisk roadmaps for our consumer-facing experiences. Participate in an iterative planning process to estimate, prioritize and roadmap the development of new features and applications. Acts as a point of escalation for teams facing complex technical challenges. Collaborate with the appropriate departments to assess and recommend technologies that support the company’s strategic goals.
• Plan. Define KPIs, objectives, and targets for measuring and improving the quality, security, scalability, maintainability, cost and time to market of our custom software solutions. Establish processes and controls to ensure that objectives are achieved, risks are managed appropriately and the organization’s resources are used responsibly, particularly in the areas of software development. Balance the work within the engineering team to include the expected capacity allocation for new features, tech debt, architecture improvements, and innovation prototypes. Ensure software delivery deadline commitments are met and manage risks and dependencies.
• Test. Identify bottlenecks and opportunities for continuous improvement in the design, development, configuration, testing, deployment, monitoring and operation of our cloud platforms. Ensure that technology standards and best practices are maintained across the organization. Ensure company technical roadblocks are resolved in a timely and cost-effective manner.
• Innovate. Create a challenging, innovative and supportive environment for team members to grow and produce their best work. Drive adoption of new technology and processes across the engineering team. Create technical requirements and application designs to govern the security, scalability, sustainability, cost and overall quality of our infrastructure, systems, content, and data. Identify opportunities for delivering the company’s services as a leader in consumer advocacy including: identification of competitive services, opportunities for innovation, and assessment of marketplace obstacles and technical hurdles.

Required Skills + Qualifications:

• BS or Master's Degree in Computer Science or a related field
• 10+ years of senior technical leadership experience, preferably in high growth startup environments
• Track record of attracting, screening, hiring and retaining software engineers
• Expertise with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Strong experience with the following modern software engineering practices: Agile / Scrum, Continuous Delivery, DevOps , Docker / Kubernetes
• Strong engineering skills with architecture, testing, monitoring, operations and deployment
• Relentless with best practices and willing to discuss the choices you make with your fellow engineers
• Strong advocate for test-driven development
• Ability to leverage data and analytics to build new systems and products
• Experience working in an agile software development environment
• Comfortable in early-stage, fast-paced, high-growth, resource-lean environments
• Strong project and people management skills
• Strong communication skills, including executive presentations

Big Plus:

• Experience consuming and designing RESTful services
• Strong git skills while working with an Agile team
• Database modeling skills in either SQL or NoSQL
• Strong Node.js experience
• Security background (encryption, RBAC, PCI-DSS / ISO compliance...)

Perks + Benefits

• Salary, Equity & Health Insurance
• Vacation: Unlimited PTO and Flex Time
• Free Food/Drinks: Catered Meals, plus stocked cabinets and fridge at your disposal
• Rad Location: Our office is in the heart of Santa Monica and has a casual work environment
• Amazing Culture: Happy Hours, Team lunches, Team breakfasts, Weekly Fitness Classes, Game Nights, Quarterly Company Outings