Director of Backend, Practice Lead

How you can help make a better world of work?

Culture Amp is on an exciting journey of growth that involves embracing a distributed architecture and scaling our Engineering function. To help us do this in a consistent and effective way, we’re seeking a full time Director of Engineering for our Backend Systems. You'll lead this practice in our Product group.

You'll be responsible for ensuring our engineering teams are producing backend code and services that follow our best practices. You’ll establish a guiding vision, processes, tools, frameworks and techniques to help teams develop applications quicker and better than ever before.

We expect you to be opinionated about what we need to do as an engineering group, and draw on leading practice, industry standards, data and your own experience to make a compelling case. You champion diversity of thought, and know when to draw the discussion to a close to move forward with a decision. When decisions don’t go your way, you to commit to the decision as if it were your own. 

You are not only an empathetic leader, but also an influencer. You have the ability to work with multiple stakeholders to sustain change. You have the technical expertise and the ability to mentor others in driving objectives to completion.

You enjoy fostering a community which brings together over 100+ backend engineers (soon to be 150) who work on our platform, through collaboration, education and support. 

Reporting to the VP of Engineering, you'll be across industry trends and latest practices to continually improve out applications and platform build and maintain as Culture Amp continues to grow.

Culture Amp leverages a modern stack including:

• Backend: Ruby, GO, Kotlin, Python
• Frontend: React, TypeScript
• Platforms: Docker, AWS, BuildKite, DataDog, Splunk, LinearB, Blameless

Key responsibilities

• Establish and lead the Backend Engineering Practice for Culture Amp
• Hiring and mentoring a team of Backend Engineers in your Backend Foundations Team.
• Guide and streamline our best practices by providing sensible defaults, guides, templates, tools, libraries, generators, examples, feedback on solution previews, making decisions, coaching, and training to all engineers.
  
• Direct the Backend Foundations Team as they build tools and capabilities to drive the tech vision
• Collaborate with other Practice Leads, Directors of Engineering, Principal Engineers and engineers to produce high quality software applications outcomes for Culture Amp that are consistent with our Tech Vision and other practice initiatives.
• Report and provide feedback to the VP of Engineering and Chief Engineer on any key learnings and changes needed across our engineering teams.

Key outcomes

• Drive “best practice” for Backend application development - Gain a deep understanding of Culture Amp’s product offerings, and the services and systems unique to each product area. And then drive a rigorous approach to simplify, scale and uplift the capabilities of all our engineers.
• Support & Training - Educate product teams with relevant industry technologies and trends, new tools and libraries as they develop new and update existing features, providing advice and support throughout the software development lifecycle. Provide both internal and external training as needed.
• Tooling & Standards - Provide effective tooling and automation so that we have a consistent and efficient approach to developing high quality backend application services. Give teams and engineers guidance through internal standards that solve common problems once for everyone.
• Communication - Ensure a steady flow of consistent communication across all of our teams, and facilitate knowledge-sharing, plan visibility and alignment of large initiatives between the Camps. 
• Mentor - Hire and Mentor the engineers in the Backend  practice.
• Backend Team Health - Ensure Backend Engineers in your practice are happy, productive, enjoy their work, have clear remits, and help to resolve issues and work through plans to improve culture and engagement to maximise their impact on our mission.
  

What You Bring

• Experience - You have significant experience in building and maintaining backend services in a complex distributed system.
• Platform & Tools - Strong knowledge and experience with Ruby and GO (bonus Kotlin & Python). Track record of uplifting engineering through simplification and standardisation that can scale to the needs of our customers.
• Clear Communicator - You are able to clearly communicate a compelling plan and the reasoning behind your decisions, ensuring campers with varying degrees of experience and context can understand your message and approach.
• A Facilitation and Stakeholder Manager - You make clear and timely decisions in the face of many nuanced trade offs and varied opinions.
• A Natural Coach and Teacher - You always make time to coach and teach all those around you. This includes your practice, peers and those you report to.
• A Driver - You get things done and you like to roll up your sleeves and get to work, pushing a number of initiatives forward simultaneously.
• Community - You have experience building community and can effectively connect people across a large organisation or complex projects.

We want you to thrive both in and out of work, so our off to you includes...

• Fully remote working options from anywhere in Australia or New Zealand
• Flexible working schedule to fit in with other commitments
• Active career growth and development support
• Home office budget for remote working
• Highly inclusive workplace with a keen focus on employee well-being
• Excellent parental leave and in work support programme
• Comprehensive remuneration package, including share options - making you an owner so you can share in Culture Amp’s success
• A job where you are making a positive difference to millions of people’s lives!

We believe that inclusive businesses are better, not just for ‘company results’, but for the world. We have a strong commitment to Anti-Racism, and endeavour to lead by example. Every step we make as a business towards anti-racism is another step we can take to support our customers in making a better world (of work). You can see our current commitments to Anti-Racism here.

Research shows that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds often don't apply for roles if they don't meet all the criteria – unlike the of majority candidates meeting significantly fewer requirements. If this applies to you - we strongly encourage you to apply.

We have a remote-first culture and this position can be based anywhere from Australia or New Zealand. This role can be fully remote or a hybrid if you are in Melbourne. We encourage you to work in the way that best suits you.