Director of Backend Engineering

Job Description

We have a simple mission at Calm: To make the world a happier and healthier place. The heart of Calm is digital but the brand is expanding offline into a variety of products and services that bring more peace, clarity and perspective into people’s busy lives. We are building Calm into the Nike of the Mind. We believe Calm can become one of the most valuable and meaningful brands in the world. Over 50 Million people have downloaded the app and we are growing by 85,000 new downloads a day. The company is profitable and headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Calm was co-founded by Alex Tew (Million Dollar Homepage) and Michael Acton Smith (Mind Candy, Moshi Monsters, Firebox). Mission To foster a world-class backend team who both build Calm’s product today and accelerate the speed that we build Calm’s tomorrow. You’ll be involved in coordinating the team’s sprints and planning. You won’t be the team’s architect — you’ll be working with an amazing team of engineers who are focused on that — but we want you to bring your technical mindset with you, as you support the team’s personal development, guide our architectural evolution, and synchronize our business and technology strategies. As part of Calm’s engineering leadership team, you’ll help design, implement and iterate our core processes for execution (sprints, planning), growth (giving effective feedback, career ladders, personal development), and technology (how do we make particularly effective technology investments?).

Outcomes

• Support a team of 8 product-oriented backend engineers by end of 2020
• Give the team clear performance objectives and goals, offer effective feedback, and coach them in their ongoing development
• Use the engineering process and tools to make week-to-week execution effective, transparent and predictable. Take the lead on ensuring our process works for us — prioritization, estimates, deadlines, expectation-setting, roadmapping, and so on
• Identify the open questions in our approach to architecture and technology, and work across Calm engineering to decide and document on effective approach
• Nurture an evolvable architecture that nimbly supports product and business expansionTake the lead on defining and rolling out several engineering organization processes or practices over course
• Understand the “buy vs build” tradeoff, and make strategic decisions about where to invest the team’s resources architecturally
• Work with senior leadership to get aligned with company-wide goals, and then use this context to prioritize backend initiatives appropriately

Competencies

• Growth mindset: receives feedback easily and incorporates it quickly
• Proactive executor: thoughtful in approach and decisive in decisions
• Pragmatic: balance scrappiness and rigor
• Ability to attract, manage and develop strong engineers
• Great technical communicator
• Strong attention to detail
• Strong product and architectural instincts

Benefits - Competitive salary and equity - Take what you need PTO - We pay your medical, dental, & vision insurance premiums - 401K - Commuter benefits - Life insurance and disability benefits - Apple equipment - Fun, energetic work environment, and daily perks - snacks, drinks, catered lunch twice a week - Opportunity to work with a product focused on making the world happier and healthier And much more! Apply for this job