Engineering Lead, Platform
Published on April 20, 2023
We’re engineers and designers. Operators and thinkers. Customer experts and parents who are customers ourselves. Recognized as a Chicago Innovation Award winner and one of the best places to work by Crain’s and Built in Chicago, we offer an innovative and fun environment where we push –– and help –– one another to make a real dent in a big problem.
About Sittercity
Sittercity, a Bright Horizons company, is a technology platform working to reimagine the child care industry. Finding, hiring and managing high-quality, trustworthy and enriching child care has never been simple, for parents or caregivers. We want to change that. At Sittercity, you can imagine and create solutions that will revolutionize a multi-billion industry and bring relief to parents and care providers alike, all while having a lot of fun! Boost your career as we launch into our next phase of growth and help build a platform that changes the way child care works.
The Opportunity
As an Engineering Lead (reporting to the Director of Engineering) at Sittercity, you’ll lead and manage our Platform team. You will be spending half of your time on hands-on technical work and half of your time on people management duties. The Platform team focuses on three main areas:
- Consolidate and simplify architecture and technology stack
- Enhance and maintain platform stability, security, and observability
- Continuously update and improve platform, applications, and tooling with the goal of accelerating product development and lifecycle
The platform team consists of one squad of a mixture of full-time employees and contractors, along with a soon-to-be spun-up associated offshore delivery squad to help with the execution of various platform initiatives. You will attract, develop and grow a high-performing Platform engineering team. This is an exciting opportunity to drive growth in the category by executing on our technical vision. We’re looking for a leader who is equally passionate about mentoring, driving results and leading engineers as they are solving complex problems.
Key Responsibilities
- Collaborate with the Director of Engineering, Senior Product Manager, other stakeholders and other teams to help plan and prioritize technical roadmaps
- Lead the execution and delivery of the roadmaps by helping the team understand the larger context of their work, and by supporting your team members
- Attract, develop and retain a high-performing team, offering ongoing feedback, professional growth opportunities, overall career guidance and other people manager related duties
- Champion communication and trust between cross-functional teams
- Drive technical and strategic vision of the team and help translate day-to-day issues into coherent and robust systems
- Ensure the timely delivery of engineering initiatives while continually raising the performance and quality bar
- Foster a collaborative and inclusive team that helps each other with a willingness to learn
- Foster best practices in software engineering and agile processes
- Participate in Level 3 (Engineering Leadership) On Call Schedule.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience developing in Ruby On Rails
- 5+ years of experience in software design, application development, and scalable architectures
- 2+ years of management experience
- Experience managing hybrid squad that is part full time and part offshore contractors
- Experience building and maintaining applications in a 24/7 production environment
- Professional experience in object oriented application languages, RDMS, caching solutions, message/queuing protocols/systems, API design and development
- Experience hiring, mentoring, coaching, and developing top engineering talent
- Successful track record of managing small agile development teams
- Strong communication skills with the ability to understand and explain complex technical issues to non-technical audiences
- Ability to provide honest, direct, and actionable feedback to the team and follow up with relevant coaching and guidance
Nice To Have Qualifications
- Experience with javascript frameworks. We currently use Vue.js on the front end.
- Experience with building Go microservices. We currently leverage some Go microservices.
- Experience with enterprise integrations
Employee Benefits
Recognized as a Chicago Innovation Award winner and one of the best places to work by Crain’s andBuilt In Chicago, we offer an inclusive, innovative, and fun environment that rewards passionate and curious individuals. You will receive the following benefits:
- Support for flexible and remote working environments
- Generous paid time off policy, including sick and holiday
- Industry leading parental leave
- Health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance
- 401(k) matching
- Sittercity membership, back up child/adult/elder care, and child care center discounts
- Tuition assistance, college coach, and enhanced family support
- Company events, social outings, and volunteer opportunities
Sittercity is committed to hiring a diverse workforce. We consider all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital or familial status, childbirth (including pregnancy) or related medical conditions including but not limited to lactation, or any other basis as prohibited by federal, state or local law. Sittercity participates in E-Verify and background checks all employees.