Director Software Engineering

Who are we hiring?

We are seeking a strategic Director of Software Engineering to join our leadership team at Sphere. In this role, you will be responsible for driving the architectural vision, technical direction, and engineering excellence across our key web applications. As a key member of the Sphere Product Management team, you will oversee the development, enhancement, and optimization of two critical web platforms: our Ticket Sales, Partnerships, and Studios websites. You will ensure these platforms are robust, scalable, and meet the highest standards for performance, security, and user experience. Your role will be instrumental in shaping the technology stack, including React, CSS, NodeJS, and Express, while managing a team of globally distributed third-party engineering, QA, and DevOps partners. You will work closely with internal teams to align product goals and technical strategy, while optimizing agile processes to accelerate product development. Your leadership will foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ensuring both immediate impact and long-term success across our platforms. Comfort with AWS, GCP, serverless platforms and automation frameworks, deep expertise in DevOps, and experience working with headless CMS is necessary.

What will you do? 

• Lead the design and implementation of robust information security protocols, ensuring secure development and production environments.
• Oversee the management of access controls, identity management, and data protection practices while ensuring compliance with industry standards and best practices to safeguard sensitive data and systems.
• Drive the adoption and optimization of CI/CD methodologies to automate the integration, testing, and deployment of software applications.
• Utilize automation to streamline the software development lifecycle, fostering faster, more reliable releases, while enhancing collaboration across engineering teams and improving overall efficiency in delivering high-quality software.
• Lead Software Engineers, QA, and DevOps directly and indirectly at multiple levels on projects and in their personal development.
• Establish and evolve engineering success metrics to align technical execution with business objectives, ensuring measurable impact on velocity, quality, and system reliability.
• Build UIs in React, Redux, CSS, HTML, and other technologies using Webpack with ESModules.
• Actively participate in and contribute to all Agile ceremonies and take personal responsibility for the success of each Sprint.

What do you need to succeed?  

• 10+ years of hands-on development experience with JavaScript, with advanced understanding of design patterns and best practices.
• 5+ years creating services and APIs in NodeJS with either Express or AWS serverless technologies like Lambda, API Gateway, AppSyn or GCP comparable services.
• 5+ years of experience building performant UIs with ReactJS and Redux.
• 5+ years of people and vendor management experience.
• Proficiency with web app tooling technologies, as we use Webpack, NPM, git/Github, Babel, Create React app, SCSS, PostCSS, as well as others.
• Experience building, architecting, designing, and implementing highly distributed global cloud-based systems, and experience in security, data, and application development.
• Experience with structured Enterprise Architecture practices, hybrid cloud deployments.
• High-level knowledge and expertise in building services in NodeJS with Express and/or serverless/microservice technologies such as Lambda, while providing RESTful APIs.
• Experience working with a headless CMS or custom Content tooling.
• Expert knowledge of technologies, such as vanilla JavaScript using ES6-ES2020 language features, CSS3 and HTML5.
• Experience in working on Ruby on Rails with a PostgreSQL.
• Proficiency with any of these testing frameworks and libraries: Jest (or similar, like Karma or Jasmine), Mocha, Chai, Sinon, CucumberJS, Webdriver IO.
• Can effectively work with command line tools.
• Experience of ESLint configuration – we use JavaScript Standard Style and AirBnB.
• Experience working in a cloud-only environment, specifically in AWS and GCP.
• Experience working on consumer and/or enterprise applications used by millions of customers is preferred.
• Proficiency in PHP, Ruby on Rails, or Python is preferred.
• Knowledge of ElasticSearch and its APIs and JavaScript or PHP SDKs is preferred.
• Understanding of any of these caching technologies is favored: CDNs (like CloudFront), in-memory caches (Redis, Memcached), page caches (like Varnish), or object caching GraphQL experience AWS, GCP, or Agile certification.
• Experience contributing to the velocity of an Agile team.
• Understanding of the basics of caching, including CDNs, in-memory caches, or page and database caching.
• Ability to create and maintain conventions, standards, established design patterns, and best practices.
• Ability to learn/work with emerging technologies, methodologies, and solutions in the Cloud/IT technology space.
• Ability to collaborate across organizational boundaries, build relationships, and achieve broader organizational goals.

Special Requirements 

• Non-standard work hours may arise as needed

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