At Philo, we’re a group of technology and product people who set out to build the future of television, marrying the best in modern technology with the most compelling medium ever invented — in short, we’re building the TV experience that we’ve always wanted for ourselves. In practice this means leveraging cloud delivery, modern tech stacks, machine learning, and hand-crafted native app experiences on all of our platforms. We aim to deliver a rock solid experience on the streaming basics, while cooking up next generation multi-screen and multi-user playback experiences.
Backend Software Engineering Manager (Billing Engineer) [NY]
Philo's video streaming product is a paid subscription service that includes a base plan and various add-on packages. We provide customers a simple, streamlined sign up, offering a variety of payment methods, including direct payments by card or digital wallet and external platform options (including RokuPay, AmazonPay, Apple IAP, GooglePlay IAP) to best serve our users. We are continually looking to improve the overall user experience, subscription conversion rates, and payment performance through enhanced data collection, data analysis, and a broad range of experimentation.
Engineering Managers at Philo lead by example, and are expected to write code and demonstrate best practices while also providing coaching, technical leadership, and insights within and across teams. We expect managers to spend roughly 80% of their time with hands-on technical project tasks (coding, designing, scoping, researching, etc.), and ~20% on team management and coaching. We are seeking an enthusiastic Software Engineering Manager to help us expand our billing offerings while also optimizing performance to benefit both our customers as well as our bottom line. As a member of a growing team, you will serve as both a technical leader to help us expand our billing system and as an internal subject matter expert on payment and subscription operations and optimization. You will work closely with the marketing team on various ways to offer novel promotions and packaging to help increase customer acquisition and retention, with the support team to assess, debug, and correct billing issues/errors, with the finance team on accounting and compliance, and with the data science team on instrumentation and analysis of core KPIs.
Responsibilities:
- Provide technical leadership to members of the billing team, including input on system architecture and design tradeoffs, as well as coaching other members of the team and mentoring new hires
- Enhance, implement, deploy, and monitor the Philo multi-biller billing system
- Collaborate with our partners to engineer billing platform solutions that deliver the smoothest billing experience for Philo’s users and while optimizing overall performance (including, but not limited to: increasing conversion rates, tuning dunning performance, minimizing errors/confusion leading to support contacts, …)
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders across marketing, support, finance, and data science teams to ensure we are measuring and optimizing every aspect of our billing system
- Drive continuous improvements to the reliability, performance, accuracy, and security of Philo’s billing service
- Build and enhance tools to proactively monitor and quickly troubleshoot issues having to do with billing performance and accuracy
- Help build rock solid reporting systems that our finance and compliance teams can rely on for accurate reporting and analysis of key company financial results
Qualifications:
- 8+ years of software development experience
- 2+ years of software engineering management experience
- Experience developing with the programmatic API of one or more subscription and/or payment management providers (bonus points for experience with Philo’s payment provider, Stripe)
- Experience developing within the ecosystem of one or more product/billing platforms (RokuPay, AmazonPay, Apple IAP, or GooglePlay IAP are a plus)
- Familiarity with payment networks, card authorizations, dunning policies, refunds, chargebacks, and reversals
- Proven track record of building highly efficient and highly available software using Ruby/Rails, Golang, Java, C++ or similar programming languages
- Experience operating in cloud computing environments using modern software deployment technologies (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, AWS)
- Experience working with large amounts of data and making data-based decisions to prioritize projects, including familiarity with relational and non-relational databases and modern data warehousing and querying with SQL
- Experience and aptitude for collaborating and communicating with internal and external stakeholders in both business and technical roles
- Knowledge of billing/subscription ecosystem trends and changes that will impact how Philo manages our payment options in the years to come
We are language agnostic, but most of our backend code is written in Golang, NodeJS and Ruby, with some C++ and Python. Our services run on Kubernetes, and we practice continuous deployment across all of our systems.
Status: Full-time
Location: Brooklyn, NY or remote
Compensation: Includes annual salary between $162K - $240K depending on experience and location, company stock options and health benefits
We value a diverse and inclusive workplace and we welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and perspectives. Philo is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that everyone does their best work when they are supported by each other and the company, and we offer a generous set of benefits to make sure the Philo team is happy and healthy. Here is a sampling of the benefits we offer our team:
- Full health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family
- 401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)
- Flexible working hours
- Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave
- Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave
- $2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)
- $5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance
- $1,250 annual home office + TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)
- $500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)
- Free Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps
- Dog-friendly office
- And much more!
For California Residents: Philo’s CCPA Notice at Collection – Employees, Applicants, Owners, Directors, Officers and Contractors
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
What the Team is Saying
What We Do
Inspired by Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, Philo was created to build a better TV experience. The company started in the college market and is available nationwide, offering subscribers dozens of top-rated television channels for a low monthly subscription. In addition to being the first entertainment-focused streaming TV service, Philo offers live TV, unlimited 1-Year DVR, on-demand, and content from top programmers all available on Android devices and Android TV, Fire Tablets and Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, iOS/iPad, Roku, PC/Mac web browsers, and Chromecast with Android functionality. Philo currently offers 60+ channels for just $25/month and allows three separate streams on three different devices with up to 10 profiles. Philo features a streamlined interface, intelligent search, and the ability to easily send your favorite shows to friends – right from within the platform. Philo is based in San Francisco, with offices in New York and Cambridge, MA. For more information, philo.com.
Why Work With Us
We empower our colleagues to do their best work and have a big impact on the product while supporting each other in a collaborative environment. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion. We believe in having transparency and openness across all parts of the company. We are committed to diversity and inclusion as we grow the Philo team.
Gallery
_0.jpeg)
_0.jpeg)
Philo Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Philo's flexible hybrid workplace model supports employees by offering a balance between remote work and in-office collaboration. This flexibility allows team members to choose a setup that enhances productivity and work-life balance.
