NOW HIRING: Engineering Manager, Platform at The Wirecutter

The Wirecutter is seeking a passionate, results-oriented, inventive software engineering manager to lead the Platform team. This is a new position that reports to the Director of Engineering and manages one of our two distributed engineering teams.  Successful candidates thrive in a fast-paced environment, prioritize well, communicate clearly, develop team members, possess a team oriented mindset, and ship quality features that achieve business goals.

As the engineering manager, you will be the hands on lead of the team behind the application and API services that serve our product reviews and affiliate business. You will manage a talented team of 2+ engineers building highly scalable platforms and APIs that power Wirecutter and related properties. You are comfortable working remotely, and ideally have experience working with a distributed development team. You are a leader, but you still have solid coding chops and strive to use the best tool for the job.

The core of this role is rock solid communication. You will be reporting directly to the Director of Engineering, but also working with Project Managers, Product Managers and various other stakeholders. The ideal candidate will value clear and effective communication, and is able to translate technical work into familiar terms for non-technical stakeholders. At the same time, you should be able to communicate to an exact level of detail the technical requirement of a task to your direct reports.

Though you will not be expected to regularly code, you will need to fully grasp code and architecture concerns.  We expect the needs of this role to change over time as the Platform team continues to grow and develop. There is an expectation that you will spend approximately 30% of your time doing development work with a goal to reduce that to 0% by next year. You will also perform Code Review tasks which require a comprehensive understanding of the codebase and architecture.

We have a strong focus on scale, reliability, performance and product agility, and that means picking the right tool for the job, while being pragmatic and flexible. We believe building the right thing is more important than building something right (although that is important too). We use agile methodologies to continuously integrate on features and enhancements. We develop in an iterative fashion; creating a minimum viable product and employing appropriate testing to determine future development.

About The Wirecutter:

Founded five years ago by journalists fed up with the time and energy it takes to shop, The Wirecutter (which includes its sister site The Sweethome) developed a simpler approach to giving buying advice: just tell people exactly what to get in one single guide. The company’s purpose: to help people find great things, quickly and easily.  Through rigorous testing, research, reporting, and whatever means necessary, they create straightforward recommendations that save readers from unnecessary stress, time, and effort.  We then monetize these guides by enabling our readers to easily purchase the products they are interested in.

The Wirecutter was recently acquired by, and is now a subsidiary of The New York Times Company.  As part of the acquisition, the Times is investing in The Wirecutter to accelerate its business through editorial category expansion, development of more robust product features and unlocking new revenue streams.

Responsibilities/Qualifications

• Articulate and drive technical vision in the form of technology recommendations, ideas, and approaches aligned with our product and business goals

• Develop an in-depth understanding of our existing products and the infrastructure that supports them and facilitate management of existing products and development of new ones

• Own the efficiency, growth, and delivery of the team, making sure the team is as productive as possible to complete short term and long term objectives

• Collaborate with the product team on the technical scope and product requirements of development projects

• Create technical plans and lead implementation efforts for complex projects, refactoring, and optimization efforts

• Lead and manage a remote team of 2+ engineers, conducting regular 1:1s and other administrative functions for all direct reports

• Proactive talent growth and mentorship for team members through just-in-time feedback, personal goals, task assignments, and other professional development plans

• Coordinate successful product and feature rollouts

• 1+ year(s) of managing an engineering team

• 3+ years of software development experience with PHP and MySQL

• Experience development applications using Laravel or similar PHP frameworks

• Experience developing and consuming restful web services

• Experience working closely with design and product teams throughout the product development life cycle

• A deep understanding of software development in a team, and a track record of shipping software on time

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both written and in person

• Exceptional customer relationship skills including the ability to discover the true requirements underlying feature requests, recommend alternative technical and business approaches, and lead engineering efforts to meet aggressive timelines with optimal solutions

• Advanced understanding of object oriented software principles, design patterns, and agile methodologies

• Strong leadership, project & logistics management, and people mentoring skills

• Passion for The New York Times’s and The Wirecutter’s mission and commitment to be a part of our innovation and growth

Culture and benefits at The New York Times Company and The Wirecutter:

Though The Wirecutter has physical locations in both NYC and LA, the company promotes and encourages a remote workforce, so that our employees can work in flexible and comfortable ways.

We are committed to career development, supported by a formal mentoring program as well as tuition reimbursement.The New York Times Company offers frequent panel discussions and talks by industry leaders (Sheryl Sandberg, Melinda Gates and Ta-Nehisi Coates are a few recent examples), that we encourage our employees to attend.

We believe diversity fuels innovation and creativity, and we have a variety of employee groups and task forces across The New York Times Company and The Wirecutter dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace.

We offer a generous parental leave policy, which was recently expanded in response to employee feedback.  Birth mothers receive 16 weeks fully paid, adoptive parents and birth fathers receive 10 weeks also fully paid.  Similarly, we offer competitive health and dental insurance, as well as 401k matching.

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If interested, send us a resume at digitaljobs@nytimes.com

The New York Times Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual’s sex, age, race, color, creed, national origin, alienage, religion, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation or affectional preference, gender identity and expression, disability, genetic trait or predisposition, carrier status, citizenship, veteran or military status and other personal characteristics protected by law. All applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to legally protected characteristics.