Director, Application Engineering

Job Summary

This position will be responsible for driving development teams new feature development and making enhancements to the Classmates web site and internal applications. This role manages a team of engineers and works closely with our infrastructure team to provide solutions for rich customer experiences including e-commerce and messaging platforms on our website. Balancing these features with best practices and existing methodologies to keep management and web experiences scalable while guiding teams with a philosophy of continual improvement leveraging lean principles.

The teams you lead are a cross-functional groups involved in the creation, design, development, and maintenance of web sites and web-based applications using the most cutting-edge technologies such as React.js, TypeScript, Node.js, GraphQL, and many more. The teams will be responsible for innovative ideas and performing experiments that prove our product development in the marketplace.

This is a hybrid role located in Bellevue, WA. We are not able to offer visa sponsorship/visa transfers for this role.

Duties/Responsibilities

• Coaches, mentors, and empowers the team: Provides leadership while solving tactile issues. Develops best practices across teams and contributes to improvement and delivery of services. Leads design reviews and retrospectives
• Technology leadership: Proven record of success in leading engineering teams, both managers and individual contributors to build and deliver services at scale. Lead by example, care for your team. Able to align technology decisions with business goals; customer oriented and dedicated to excellence - attentive to both internal and external customer experience
• Partner with the VP of Technology to drive the strategic planning and budget process for the Technology team.
• Partners with other engineering leaders to guide conversations and best practices in application architecture and cloud infrastructure. Advocates for performance, security and automation
• Collaborates closely with Development teams on proper architecture decisions: Communicates team priorities, system improvements and changes to stakeholders, vendors, and partners to support and deliver solutions for the company
• Understands the business and guides technology solutions to deliver results through collaboration and coordination across business units to determine requirements and deliverables for projects.
• Defines process, metrics and SLAs across our site and monitors the performance and reliability. Partners with other teams to investigate and resolve their performance issues.

Required Skills/Abilities

• Strong verbal and written communication skills, interpersonal skills, organizational skills and attention to detail
• Excellent project management skills with a proven ability to meet deadlines
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, planning skills and critical thinking skills
• Strong understanding of front-end technologies, performance, and analytics
• Strong understanding of security best practices to protect systems and customer data
• Versed in commonly used technologies (includes React.js, TypeScript, Node.js, Tailwind, GraphQL) and familiarity with Ember.js and Svelte.

Education and Experience

• 10+ years of relevant work experience with 10+ years of experience in leading/managing engineering teams
• Bachelor's degree in information technology or related field, or equivalent experience
• People-focused manager with empathy, trustworthiness, and a collaborative mindset
• Strategic leader with experience leading engineering teams focused on improving quality, velocity, and customer happiness
• Demonstrated experience building, growing and inspiring a collaborative and customer-focused team of managers and engineers
• 10+ years architectural expertise, understanding of UI/UX principles and a passion for driving technical innovation
• 10+ years' experience in an Enterprise environment (Infrastructure, Software)
• Experience in an architecture related role
• Experience in development/engineering/administration of large scale, customer facing, web services
• Strong proficiency in software engineering or programming with modern languages such as Java, JS or Python
• Experience with containerized deployment using technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes
• Demonstrated Service Ownership for business-critical systems
• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with diverse stakeholders, including engineering teams, delivery teams and executive leadership

Compensation & Benefits:

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.
• Comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Opportunity to shape the social media strategy for a well-established brand.

Classmates is the premier online, social, and mobile platform for reconnecting with people from your high school years. With the largest digitized collection of high school yearbooks online, featuring over 480,000 yearbooks, users can view, tag, sign, and share memories from decades past. Classmates also boasts the most comprehensive directory of high schools and class lists, spanning from the 1940s to today, making it the ultimate destination for reminiscing, reconnecting, and rediscovering cherished school memories.

Salary Range:

• Min: $192,600
• Mid: $208,600
• Max: $228,800

The pay range reflects the salary amount the Company reasonably expects to pay for the position. It is not a guarantee of actual compensation or a specific payment amount to any candidate. The actual compensation will depend on numerous factors including, without limitation, a particular candidate's experience and qualifications.

The Company's Applicant and Worker Privacy Notice can be found here. PeopleConnect is an equal opportunity employer. Local area candidates are encouraged to apply, and please note we are not able to offer visa sponsorship, visa transfer, or corp-corp arrangements.

Note for Principal Agencies - Principal agents should not forward resumes to PeopleConnect, as we will not be responsible for any fees arising from the use of resumes submitted from agencies without a prior written and signed agreement and authorized job order for this position in place.