VP of Server Engineering

Company: Playwire
Location: Boca Raton
Posted on: February 22, 2021

Job Description:

Do you want to get a foot in the door at an online Advertising and Media company that has seen tremendous growth? Do you want to work in the world of online video; one of the fastest growing advertising formats in the world? Then Playwire is the place for you--- Playwire Media is a full-service digital innovation partner that leverages online advertising and proprietary technologies to build publishing brands in the gaming and entertainment verticals. To keep pace with our explosive growth, Playwire seeks a talented professional to join our team as our first VP of Server Engineering. Playwire deploys its own cloud-based server-side code for a variety of essential functions, from the configuration of our client-side ad products, to critical reporting systems used both by employees and customers. We are increasingly responsible for the administration and modification of third-party systems as well; our server-side horizons are expanding! As our server-side capabilities expand, we need a thoughtful, experienced leader to organize our server-side efforts across a wide range of products and use cases, crafting a coherent strategy for scaling and management. The successful candidate will be a domain expert who can discover requirements, evaluate technologies, deeply understand the complexities of our tech and ad stack, and craft a vision for server-side excellence - then execute upon it. This is a leadership role; you'll manage and lead server-side engineers in their development of our architecture and product, but also work closely with many other teams to communicate capabilities, understand issues, and coordinate with other leaders to rapidly execute on projects that cross teams. We want people who are disciplined but also creative, and unafraid to jump into projects that will be seen and used by millions of people. You'll immediately be one of the most senior members a technology team with a wide variety of responsibilities and opportunities. This position requires full-time employment; availability at our main office in Boca Raton, FL is preferred, but remote work is a possibility. Essential functions:

• Own our server infrastructure, making sure it is durable, flexible, and scalable.
• Manage the roadmapping and execution of our server-side technical strategy.
• Provide hands-on leadership of the server-side engineering team, with a willingness to get your hands dirty to show your team members how it's done.
• Use your expertise to evaluate technologies and architectures, and to establish best practices for server-side engineering.
• Work closely with multiple teams, but most importantly our Yield Ops, Ops, creative, and product teams, to understand the company's technology needs and craft the needed solutions, as well as to communicate technical challenges to those teams and come up with solutions.
• Work closely with other technology leaders, most particularly in the execution of products and features that operate across multiple parts of our stack.
• Communicate your progress to senior management, especially the CTO.
• Lead the hiring of additional server-side engineers for the team, while also integrating contracted resources.
• Understand resources and scheduling requirements, and work with project management to meet our project needs. Required qualifications:
  • 7+ years managing high-performing technical teams in an environment of rapid development and company growth.
  • 3+ years experience specifically managing teams focused on online technology, with a significant cloud-based server component to your tech stack.
  • Experience working in a team using Agile development and project management practices.
  • Demonstrable expertise designing and building server-side systems.
  • Demonstrable experience with Ruby on Rails and at least one other common language (and, potentially, framework) used for server-side development.
  • Demonstrable experience using test-driven development and automated testing suites to help maintain server-side code.
  • Demonstrable experience building products that have been forced to scale.
  • Ability to shift between rapid prototyping to durable development as the situation demands.
  • Demonstrable experience tying together multiple services and data sources, breaking apart functional components in the pursuit of improved reliability and monitoring. Nice-to-haves:
    • Experience using AWS's cloud hosting for server-side capabilities.
    • Experience with digital ad servers, SSPs, or ad exchanges.
    • Experience with digital advertising units, terminology and standards.
    • Experience interacting with big data technologies and services.

Keywords: Playwire, Boca Raton , VP of Server Engineering, Engineering , Boca Raton, Florida