Manager, Engineering Strategy & Operations

Overview

As a member of the Engineering Strategy and Operations (S&O) team, you will be an integral partner to help Verkada’s 300+ person software engineering organization - and our 150+ Product, Design, and Hardware teammates, known collectively as “Builders” - to work faster, smart, and happier.

As a Manager, Engineering Strategy & Operations on the team, you will serve as an operator and thought partner. This means you’ll help identify the “right things to do” while also ensuring we “do things right.” You will lead cross-functional initiatives and processes to drive results across the engineering organization.

Who You Are

• A technology lover. Someone with a strong passion for, and understanding of, computers and technology. This could manifest itself as a professional engineer, a computer science major, a self-taught engineer, a tinkerer, or more.
• An operator. Someone who will enjoy spending 60%+ of their time running operations of people, processes, and projects. This execution is frequently coupled with determining ‘how’ to best execute those steps.
• A curious strategic thinker. Someone who thinks about the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of teams, organizations, and individuals, and will enjoy spending ~30% of their time asking questions on how we can be better.
• A people person. Someone who enjoys spending 50% of their day in collaboration with others – e.g. team meetings, 1:1s, and informal conversations – to move the needle forward.
• A clear, concise, and thoughtful communicator. Someone with clear communication whether in-person, on Slack, or in any other medium.
• A conscientious contributor. Someone who takes pride in attention to detail.

Responsibilities

While the scope of this role is broad, it manifests itself primarily in three activities:

• Building relationships and creating buy-in across teams and functions with technically minded individuals.
• Identifying pain points of engineers, managers, and teams that apply broadly and resonate deeply. There are many things our organization can do better: our team will identify challenges, determine significance, and then build solutions that consider the complexities of implementation.
• Creating and running high-quality, scalable processes that maximize organizational and team effectiveness. This is where the rubber meets the road: creating positive change for the organization.

More specifically, within your first 90 days on the job, you will begin owning high-impact, high-visibility, initiatives, namely:

• Data-Informed Decision-Making - in partnership with engineering and product leadership, identify the correct KPIs (and aligned goals), to measure product performance. Leverage these insights to support leadership decision-making and ensure alignment with company priorities.
• Engineering Budget and Resource Optimization - partner with the infrastructure data team to understand and validate non-COGS costs: the engineering code and impetus driving them, alignment towards organizational goals, future forecasts, and the cost/benefit of those features and costs for Verkada. Leverage these insights to enable engineering leaders to manage budgets and resources effectively.
• Engineering Operations Tooling - work with the CTO and Engineering Operations to identify, test, and pilot third-party tools to enable software engineers - and frequently hardware, design, and product teammates - to work faster, smarter, and happier.

In addition to owning those initiatives, you will be a thought partner and operations teammate on many initiatives that affect software engineers and Builders more broadly.

We are a fast-growing company with an ambitious mission. As we continue to grow and scale, the role’s responsibilities may expand: a strong candidate will enjoy navigating this broadened scope and inherent ambiguity with optimism.

Experience / Requirements

• 3-7 years of work experience, ideally in the functions of engineering, data science, operations, and/or product and in the industries of technology (software, hardware, SaaS, etc.), manufacturing, banking, or management consulting.
• Bachelors, masters, or equivalent, ideally in computer science, data science, engineering, information technology, or business.
• Experienced and skilled in common productivity software (Google Workspace); comfortable in Salesforce and similar CRM tools; familiar with software development process tools such as Jira, Linear, etc.
• Five days a week in-person presence in San Mateo, CA.

Culture and Values

Someone who lives the six Verkada Engineering values: ownership, integrity, persistence and grit, bias towards action, craft, and teamwork.

As an equal opportunity employer, Verkada is committed to providing employment opportunities to all individuals. All applicants for positions at Verkada will be treated without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

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