VP of Engineering

About Skillz:

With over 300 game studio partners and hundreds of thousands of matches played daily, Skillz is changing the gaming industry with the first mobile tournament platform featuring real cash prizes. Our technology enables a unique monetization method that enhances gameplay instead of interrupting it, increasing revenue by monetizing gamers in a way that aligns with their competitive nature. Now, game developers can enable a full-featured multiplayer gaming system with cash and point prizes, achievements, loyalty rewards and more with a simple 10 minute SDK integration.

We are venture-backed by well known venture capital firms including Atlas Venture and Nextview Ventures and growing rapidly. Our mission is to change the way that game developers can monetize and provide gamers with the pinnacle of competition.

We are true believers in the future of electronic Sports, so don’t be surprised when you see us playing video games at our desks; at Skillz, that type of behavior is encouraged.  You can catch us on Thursday nights playing anything from Counter Strike to Scrabble over dinner, while discussing new technologies or brainstorming ideas to improve our business.  We’re working to build a truly groundbreaking company that will enable eSports for Everyone. As the creators and leaders of a new marketplace for competitive gaming, we work with a “do whatever it takes” mentality, and frankly, we get the job done!

Our team is comprised of passionate, smart and creative individuals who consistently seek out new challenges and knowledge.  We embrace out of the box strategies to propel our business. Our staff comes from diverse backgrounds and our leadership team has funded, built and sold successful companies.  We know how to scale disruptive technology companies, and if you're up for the challenge, we would love for you to join our team and help us shape the future of games and sports.

The Position

The Vice President Engineering, reporting directly to Skillz’ CEO, Andrew Paradise, will be the senior executive responsible for the growth, development and the day-to-day management of Skillz’s software engineering organization The software engineering organization is structured into the following teams, SDK Engineering, Server Engineering, Developer Full Stack Engineering, Data Analytics/AI, and Infrastructure Engineering. There are currently four Managers of Engineering, each responsible for one of the core teams – currently a Manager for the Data Analytics/AI team is being recruited, 28 individual contributors, and 37 contractors comprising the organization.

Overall, the engineering organization has been moving to an environment and culture of continuous development and rapid release, as opposed to a two-to-three-week cadence of sprints. The VP Engineering will work in partnership with the Vice Presidents of Consumer Products and Developer Products to provide the engineering capacity, resources and engineering management structure to drive this transformation to continuous development and rapid release while creating improvements that drive the evolution of the Skillz’ consumer and developer platforms and the respective services deployed on each. In addition to continuously evolving the architecture of these services to allow for massive scalability, the VP Engineering is responsible for ensuring that the platforms, services and applications are all operating at the highest levels of availability, meeting all internal and external SLAs.

The requirements for additional team members are broad-based across the entire engineering organization spanning all distinctions of software developers, data scientists, server engineers, back-end developers, full stack engineers, program management and core R&D personnel. It is expected that over the balance of 2023, the VP Engineering will focus on hiring the necessary personnel to both lead and continue to fill out these teams, at an individual contributor and engineering leadership level, of the highest caliber personnel.

Skillz is committed to absolute quality rather than quantity of all hires. It is critically important that the VP Engineering contribute to and be a force in leading the efforts at hiring individuals who are comfortable and thrive in the fast-paced, scrappy culture within Skillz that can drive innovation and the quick development and release of products. To this end, one of the main initial objectives of the VP Engineering is to identify and implement the necessary processes of engineering management that continue to drive the transformation of Skillz’ engineering into a continuous development and rapid release culture.

It is critical that the VP Engineering creates and implements an overall structure that not only drives accountability, but that inherently supports the growth and development of junior developers to senior developers, of appropriate individual contributors to managers, and of managers of individual contributors to managers of managers.

Given the significant AI, ML, data analytics, security, and commerce elements that represent both significant process and experiential touch points for a Skillz player on the platform, there are a complex set of co-dependent and independent platform capabilities and functionalities that all work together to create and inform a consumer’s experience of Skillz. The exact organizational responsibilities the VP of Engineering will have for this complex ecosystem, and decisions made around the direct reporting and/or matrix reporting structure, will depend to a significant degree on the finalist candidate’s experience level and seniority.

However, regardless of the finalist candidate’s experience level and seniority, the VP of Engineering will be responsible for instilling a level of unprecedented commitment in the Engineering organization to focus on, create, and launch a comprehensive set of capabilities that both delight developers and consumers and result in an ever-increasing stickiness and loyalty to the Skillz platform.

Goals for the VP of Engineering 2H 2023/1H 2024:

• Continue to drive the transformation of Skillz’ engineering organization into a well-coordinated set of teams and individuals within a framework that creates a continuous development and rapid release environment.
• Drive the evolution of the Skillz platform- lead/invent architecture strategy, investing in and adopting the best technologies for scale.
• Create and begin to implement the plan to reduce the number of higher-cost contractors to full-time offshore employees – most likely in Bangalore.
• Continue to make quality hires that fill out the organization at all levels.
• Improve execution quality/velocity- implement best practices to successfully run a 24/7 platform with a high reliability and commitment to SLAs, without sacrificing velocity.
• Bring continued insight and magnitude when it comes to technology strategy and where Skillz should be investing time and effort. The VP will know the latest breakthroughs from an application standpoint and technology architecture perspective, and he/she will know where the business should be evolving.
• Support, co-own and drive business outcomes with the product management team.
• Bring a sense of accountability to business outcomes- develop KPIs across all aspects of the engineering organization.

The Person: Experience & Attributes

The VP of Engineering will be a seasoned and experienced engineering executive with at least 10-15 years of software engineering experience, the bulk of that in gaming companies. Ideally the VP Engineering will also have been a co-founder or founder of a gaming company where he/she has then led the overall engineering organization. Far more important than the size of the organization managed, the VP Engineering will have evolved their approach to managing an engineering organization to one where more of a Kanban style and methodology defines the organization, as opposed to bi-weekly or once every three weeks sprints. And this approach has delivered a continuous development and rapid release culture that consistently delivers the highest quality product.

While it is preferred that the finalist candidate have scaled an organization, regardless of the actual numbers constituting the overall engineering team, the VP Engineering will be a hands-on manager, someone who is comfortable not only reviewing code, but who still enjoys selectively writing code.

Within the world of games development, the ideal candidate will have a demonstrated track record of successfully building and scaling back-end services in addition to the games themselves. Ideally, the VP Engineering will have experience developing either commerce or social back-end services as well as having owned the development of end user experiences. A Strong commitment to service delivery and proven expertise in maintaining high levels of service with regards to internal and external customers is important.

While a computer science, math or engineering educational background is desired, and an advanced degree in business and or science will be strongly considered, above all else, the finalist candidate must have a demonstrated track record of successfully delivering the highest quality product that has proven successful in the marketplace, and scaling and growing an evolving software development organization that is grounded in the principles and methodologies of continuous development and rapid delivery.

The ideal candidate will be located in either the Bay Area or Las Vegas, or if not, the finalist candidate must be willing to relocate to Las Vegas.