Lead Engineer

About Ovative Group:

Ovative Group is the premier independent media and measurement firm in the United States. We help change-makers, in fast-growing, customer-centric organizations across industries reinvent their marketing and measurement programs. We leverage our media, measurement, and consulting capabilities to help brands like Coach, Kate Spade, Stuart Weitzman, Facebook, The Home Depot, CVS, Disney, and UnitedHealth Group transform their media and marketing programs. Our proprietary approach to measuring and optimizing marketing investment decisions, Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), is disrupting the industry and setting the gold standard for customer and marketing strategy, activation, and measurement.

Recognized eight consecutive years on Star Tribune’s list of Top 150 Workplaces and five years on Inc. 5000’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in America, we pride ourselves in always overdelivering for our clients, our teams, and our communities.

About the Role:

As a Lead Engineer, your primary role will be to design, develop, and deploy robust, data-driven software applications. Your expertise will be fundamental to advancing our marketing and measurement efforts. You will shape our technology direction and drive it from vision to execution. You will also be expected to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, and other engineering teams.

Your role extends beyond just technical responsibilities. You will need to break down complex concepts into manageable workstreams and mitigate product risk. A critical part of your job will be to anticipate the needs of the product team, understanding the strengths and limitations of your team, and making decisions that balance the cost and value of each choice.

You will also be a mentor, helping to foster an environment of inclusion and respect.

This role requires solid leadership skills, strategic foresight, analytical and problem-solving skills, great attention to detail, and strong technical acumen. Your ability to look ahead, anticipate challenges, and plan accordingly will be key to your success.

Responsibilities of a Lead Engineer:

Technical Leadership Responsibilities:

• Lead the technical creation, architecture, design, and implementation of products, ensuring their scalability, operational excellence, and significant business impact.
• Collaborate with peers and Product Management to develop innovative measurement solutions and high-performance products with efficient, testable, reusable code.
• Create technical specifications, oversee code reviews, and assist in resolving urgent application issues in and outside business hours, as part of ownership of the product's technical perspective.
• Innovate and maintain product quality in partnership with development partners, including prototyping and rapidly iterating solutions for viability and scalability.
• Uphold code quality and standards while managing data integrity risks through efficient QA strategies.
• Proactively introduce new methodologies, technologies, or optimizations that will increase efficiency, scale, and value for our organization.
• Seek, recommend, and implement process improvements across development operations to increase efficiency and quality of work.

Communication and Documentation Responsibilities:

• Directly engage with clients and internal stakeholders to understand business goals, gather requirements, and translate them into detailed, actionable technical requirements.
• Define and be accountable for providing clear documentation to various user levels.
• Lead discussions with technical and non-technical stakeholders, including clients & executives.
• Serve as a key technical liaison between project/product stakeholders and the team, providing technical support to the Product Manager.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to the Scrum Master and Product Manager during Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning to ensure a viable and predictable plan can be achieved.

People and Culture Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and develop diverse technical talent, ensuring equitable opportunities and a culture of inclusion and respect, thereby inspiring and motivating all team members.
• Participate actively in our talent acquisition and training programs, striving to build and maintain a diverse and inclusive team.
• Drive the culture and technical excellence of the team.

Requirements:

• 8+ years of product development work experience in data engineering, data science, or software engineering.
• Accomplished technical lead with 4+ years of experience in Agile methodologies.
• Demonstrated technical thought leadership at an enterprise scale.
• Deep expertise in developing robust products with Cloud Computing (GCP, AWS, Azure) using Python and SQL.
• Experience in big data processing and products containing AI, machine learning, and statistical tools.
• High-level of business acumen; preferably experience in digital & traditional marketing as well as advanced marketing measurement.
• Exceptional attention to detail and outstanding written and oral communication skills.
• Direct experience working with business users to understand goals and gather requirements.
• DevOps experience with containerization or CI/ CD pipelines, a plus
• Experience with Front-End technologies and creating front-end requirements, a plus
• Proficiency with version control solutions (i.e., GitHub).

Pay Transparency

At Ovative, we offer a transparent view into three core components of your total compensation package: Base Salary, Annual Bonus, and Benefits. The salary range for this position below is inclusive of an annual bonus. Actual offers are made with consideration for relevant experience and anticipated impact. Additional benefits information is provided below.

For our Sr. Manager positions, our compensation ranges from $111,000 to $186,000, which is inclusive of a 25% bonus.

Benefits of Working at Ovative Group

We provide strong, competitive, holistic benefits that understand the importance of your life inside and out of work.

Culture:

Culture matters and we’ve been recognized as a Top Workplace for eight years running because of it. We demand trust and transparency from each other. We believe in doing the hard and complicated work others put off. We’re open in communication and floor plan. We’re flat – our interns sit next to VPs, our analysts work closely with senior leaders, and our CEO interacts with every single person daily. Put together, these elements help foster an environment where smart people can support each other in performing to their highest potential.

Compensation and Insurance:

We strive to hire and retain the best talent. Paying fair, competitive compensation, with a large bonus incentive, and phenomenal health insurance is an important part of this mix.

We’re rewarded fairly and when the company performs well, we all benefit.

Tangible amenities we enjoy:

• Access to all office spaces in MSP, NYC, and CHI
• Frequent, paid travel to our Minneapolis headquarters for company events, team events, and in-person collaboration with teams.
• Flexible paid vacation policy
• 401k match program
• Top-notch health insurance options
• Monthly stipend for your mobile phone and data plan
• Sabbatical program
• Charitable giving via our time and a financial match program
• Shenanigan’s Day

Working at Ovative won’t be easy, but if you like getting your hands dirty, driving results, and being surrounded by the best talent, it’ll be the most rewarding job you’ll ever have. If you think you can make us better, we want to hear from you!