VP of Engineering

Marco Polo is a video chat app created for one simple and significant purpose—to help people feel close.

We're currently seeking a VP of Engineering to help us expand and lead our Engineering team at Marco Polo. A great candidate for this role is a strong people manager who is passionate about designing and scaling a successful engineering organization that meets the changing needs of customers and our business. The person in this role will be an integral part of the senior leadership team, partnering with others on that team to translate our company vision and strategy into engineering strategies that enable us to achieve our purpose at scale.

In this position, you will:

Provide Strategic and Operational Leadership: You’ll work closely with our senior leadership team to translate our company vision and strategy into a strategy and vision for the Engineering function. You’ll track and manage key KPIs to objectively assess engineering’s progress against our roadmap, pivoting as needed, and sharing learnings along the way. To do this you’ll build a deep understanding of our product, customer experience and the drivers of revenue and user growth.

Lead and grow our Engineering organization: You’ll expand, uplevel, and manage engineers, including those embedded on other teams, ensuring we have the key roles needed to execute our roadmap. You’ll foster a culture aligned to our values within Engineering and across teams. You’ll help us recruit and retain top talent to help us scale our teams. You’ll do all this by being a thought leader who is able to earn respect and trust and help grow even our most senior engineers.

Ensure we ship at high velocity and with high quality: You’ll build systems and processes that enable our engineers to consistently deliver multiple concurrent projects, on time, with high quality and within a budget. You’ll ensure prompt responses to urgent issues that are customer and revenue impacting. You’ll be responsible for leading our engineering team in ensuring our services are reliability up and running. You’ll partner closely with our Chief Architect to employ industry best practices to drive innovation, address technical debt, advance system architecture and improve our processes while still meeting our overall product and business objectives.

Ideally, you have:

10+ years of Engineering leadership experience in a consumer technology company

5+ years hands on experience architecting/developing mobile product lines within highly complex technical infrastructures.

A passion for people management. You love empowering and developing team members. You have a strong track record of creating team cohesion to enable the team to achieve great things. And you’ve managed a fully-remote team. 

A strong track record of collaborating effectively with other senior leaders across a company. 

You understand that growing and engaging your team is one of the highest ROI activities you can do as a leader, and you found innovative ways to consistently do this. 

Experience aligning software engineering within a product-driven environment. You know how to set up and manage cross-functional engineering teams. 

Strong attention to detail with prior experience developing KPIs and metrics. Experience with OKRs is a plus. 

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with both highly-technical and non-technical teams.

You’ll love working here because:

We’re a purpose-driven company making a difference in the lives of millions of people.

We have been doing the remote work thing long before it became necessary. We’re good at it and we’ll make sure you are too!

We move quickly so you’re constantly learning and things never get stale.

We know good ideas come from everywhere, so we work to ensure every person feels safe to take risks and think outside of the box.

We offer competitive compensation, including equity, and we’ve got you covered when it comes to your health (medical, vision, dental), finances, and your family (paid family leave).

Does this sound interesting to you? If so, then we'd love to hear from you. We care deeply about diversity and inclusion at Marco Polo. If you’re on the fence about whether you’re a fit, go ahead and apply! Each application is reviewed by a real, live human who understands that each candidate’s unique lived experience is more valuable than buzzwords on a resume.

A bit about us:

Marco Polo is private video chat for your real relationships - not the entire world. Our video chat app allows you to send a video message at your convenience, and your friend or family member can send back whenever they can. With millions of people already benefiting from this new way of using technology to nurture their relationships, we’re proving that we can reject harmful but profitable business practices and build products that are good for you.

In June 2020, we launched Marco Polo Plus, a subscription plan that offers a premium experience. We aim to be a sustainable business while remaining free in a way that upholds our brand promise to be good for you. Plus delivers on our promise to monetize without ads or selling user data. 

Though our backgrounds are diverse, we share a belief—lives flourish when people feel close. That common inspiration keeps us aligned with our purpose as a team, which is scattered across 16 states (so far), coast-to-coast throughout North America.

The distance doesn't slow us down. We keep the engine humming from our homes, co-working spaces, and coffee shops—connecting with daily Zoom calls, and retreats. Whether collaborating through Slack, video calls, or of course Marco Polo, our team knows how to keep connected—it’s what we do best!

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We can add teammates from anywhere in North America.