Director of Engineering, LeafLink Financial

Job Description

About LeafLink

LeafLink is the regulated cannabis industry’s largest wholesale marketplace, providing licensed dispensaries the ability to order from their favorite brands, as well as a suite of software tools for those brands to manage and scale their operations.

With over 5,500 retailers and more than 1,600 brands across 26 territories in the US and Canada, LeafLink is setting the industry standard for how cannabis businesses grow together. LeafLink annually processes and manages more than $3 billion in wholesale cannabis orders.

Our team, backed by funding from leading VC’s, is poised to define the cannabis supply chain through technology. LeafLink was named one of Built In NYC's ‘Best Places to Work in 2020’, as well as one of Fast Company’s ’Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise for 2018’, joining the ranks of Amazon, Slack, and VMWare - and we’re just getting started!

The Role:

LeafLink is seeking a Director of Engineering to join our New York team, focusing on overseeing and scaling our growing LeafLink Financial (LLF) products and business lines. This role will primarily be responsible for owning the technical roadmap, team growth and focus, and the partnership between Engineering and LLF business stakeholders. As the Director overseeing this area of LeafLink’s Engineering department, you will be in a position to have a direct, lasting impact on the teams and technologies used to power our business.

LeafLink has built a successful financial platform, helping brands and retailers on our platform optimize cash flow and reduce risk. We’ve built a growing team around these products and are now looking for an experienced Engineering leader to come in and take the team and software products to the next level. As the Director overseeing this business line, your role has the opportunity to help shape and grow these products and the engineers that work on it. You will get to work with new and growing technologies and concepts such as containerized and serverless design patterns, Python, Node.js, Golang, Kubernetes, AWS managed services, third-party financial tooling integrations, and service-oriented architectures. It’s a very exciting time to join our engineering team!

Reporting to the VP of Engineering, this role will be responsible for leading the growing team that makes up our LeafLink Financial pods, including frontend, backend, and data-focused engineers. You will also be responsible for helping shape LLF’s technical roadmap, vetting and integrating third-party partners, and working closely with business stakeholders to continue to evolve and grow LLF’s products and capabilities. The role is flexible in terms of management vs hands-on development split, but candidates should expect to work in a wide variety of capacities within the department, ranging from providing technical leadership through overseeing architectural vision, implementation, and iteration, leading and mentoring by example through code reviews and direct feedback, and interacting with their direct reports to ensure career pathing remains on track and impediments to process are remediated quickly and sustainably.

Ideal candidates for this role possess the ability to organize, manage, communicate, and deliver complex projects and concepts not only from an engineering and architecture perspective but also by implementing and iterating on team processes that promote collaboration and general cohesiveness among team members. Additionally, candidates will be well placed if they enjoy finding, hiring, and growing strong technical and management talent and working to grow and foster a culture that’s both inclusive and values the diversity of its members.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the VP of Engineering and business stakeholders to properly plan short and long-term goals and execute on a technical roadmap that continues to evolve the LeafLink Financial product capabilities and functionality to meet the needs of our platform users
• Communicate effectively with department leadership to manage expectations, remove blockers, and ensure adequate resourcing to meet commitments
• Advise both technical and non-technical leadership on technical product strategy, both on scaling current products and the relative value of new products, technologies, and capabilities
• Mentor and manage a team of engineers (and eventually managers), focusing on both their day-to-day responsibilities as members of the engineering department and also their career growth, interpersonal and leadership skills, and future-facing goals
• Plan, lead, and help ensure delivery of products and projects, partnering closely with product leaders and external stakeholders
• Set and drive the architectural design and development objectives and processes for our emerging suite of financial tools based on a flexible product roadmap
• Establish clear goals and success criteria for the various projects being worked on so KPIs can be measured and reported accurately to determine project health
• Participate in and lead quarterly OKR planning and execution sessions with both your direct reports and your business stakeholder, working closely with department leadership to craft challenging-but-reachable goals for each
• Interview and contribute to the growth of the LLF engineering org, focusing on finding and then retaining candidates that will continue to elevate and diversify our ever-expanding set of in-house engineering talent
• Help the team make critical software design decisions that will have a lasting impact on LeafLink Financial’s platform and products
• Partner effectively with other teams within the department that are responsible for supporting additional products and business lines today
• Help cultivate and advance a collaborative culture that values ownership and finding the best solution to a given problem while also emphasizing the importance of testing and automation
• Advocate for and deliver well-balanced solutions to technical issues as they arise based on a constantly-evolving product roadmap

Qualifications:

• A strong leader with proven experience building teams and applications that drive a company forward in its objectives and initiatives
• Experience with strategic planning and technical roadmapping that takes into account business and product stakeholders
• A passion for building and retaining teams of individuals that are highly motivated and excited about the work they’re contributing to
• Extensive experience communicating estimations and project visibility to senior management and stakeholders
• Experience managing product and project process, resourcing, timelines, and delivery efforts with cross-functional teams
• Experience working in and advocating for agile environments
• Extensive experience working in service-oriented, API-driven application tech stacks and working knowledge of the challenges and gotchas that can bring to the SDLC
• Experience working within e-commerce, B2B, and their ancillary systems as well as their mobile counterparts
• Experience working and leading teams within the startup FinTech space is preferred
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills
• Passionate about product-focused, data-driven decision-making and continuous iteration and delivery
• Experience building applications and working with underlying systems that work within fully containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes) a plus
• An interest in the cannabis industry and / or the LeafLink brand

Benefits:

• Flexible PTO to give our employees a little extra R&R when they need it
• Competitive compensation and 401k
• Comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision)
• Commuter Benefits through a Flexible Spending Account
• A robust stock option plan to give our employees a direct stake in LeafLink’s success