[Wattpad] Engineering Manager

Wattpad’s vision is to entertain and connect the world through webnovel stories. Since 2006, we’ve been on a mission to use the power of community and technology to unleash the full potential of stories to the world. Representing a tapestry of cultures and languages, around the world come to Wattpad every month to share and discover stories they can’t find anywhere else. Come build the future of entertainment and storytelling with our global team, and write your next chapter with us!

Wattpad is part of the WEBTOON family of brands, the largest storytelling platform in the world that enables creators and users to discover, create, and share stories. With over 24 million creators and ~170 million active users per month, we are truly empowering creation by anyone, for everyone. To read more about our family of Brands, check out our website here. 

We are hiring an Engineering Manager for one of our platform engineering teams. Platform engineering teams build capabilities and evolve our technology. The team mandate is to increase the effectiveness of our engineers through optimizing our systems and creating internal tools and processes. Our Platform, Infrastructure and Enablement team’s main focus is to deliver, maintain, improve and build best in class platforms and infrastructure to support product building at Wattpad.

What you'll be doing:

• Lead a team of 5-10 engineers and play an active role in hiring across the team
• Coach engineers on the team and guide them through a goal setting and achievement
• Contribute to the technology strategy by guiding and shepherding the technical architecture
• Maintain high quality standards, especially with technology, and foster a culture of long-term thinking and innovation
• Help support and unblock the team in delivering on its goals; you will oversee the technical scoping and planning for the team, and lead sprint rituals such as daily scrum and retrospectives
• Work alongside Product Managers and technical product managers to provide leadership, guidance and direction for the team in delivering 

What we're looking for:

• 2+ years of experience building and leading successful engineering teams
• 5+ years of experience in a prior software development role
• Experience leading and guiding large-scale technical projects
• A strong technical background in order to make well informed decisions
• An effective communicator that can translate complex technical concepts to various audiences
• Comfortable working with ambiguity and technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field 

Bonus points for:

• AWS and related products: EKS, MSK, DynamoDB, S3, RDS, Elasticache
• Infrastructure technologies: Redis, Memcached, MySQL, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes
• Languages/other technologies: Go, Terraform, Protobuf/gRPC, Python

What we offer:

• Career development; we believe in mentorship and investing in your learning, supporting you to achieve your goals
• Health benefits, including vision and dental!
• RRSP Contributions (Canada), 401K Contributions (USA)
• Generous vacation and Parental Leave Top-up
• Corporate discount for gym memberships for you and your family
• Winter break shutdown and a whole lot more!

Wattpad is conducting all interviews in a distributed manner using applicable third party software where needed and using visual interface tools such as Google Meet and Zoom.

About Wattpad

Who are we? Entrepreneurs and Do-ers. Our vision is to entertain and connect the world through stories, and our mission is to use the power of community and technology to unleash the full potential of stories to the world.

What does that mean? We are visionaries, community builders, passionate problem solvers, storytellers, coffee snobs (tea drinkers, too!), curious by nature, and culturally diverse.

What are we obsessed with? Our users. Solving complex problems and maximizing flow. Learning constantly. Building the next great storytelling product. Finding the greatest stories ever told. Dogs (and cats), coffee, and good snacks.

How do we work? Autonomously, collaboratively, respectfully. Balancing with work, family, and play...and all while having a great time.

Wattpad is a remote friendly company and encourages remote candidates to apply as long as they are located and authorized to work in either the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) as a precondition of employment. We are not able to sponsor applicants for work permits.

If you happen to live near the areas of either Toronto, Ontario or Halifax, Nova Scotia, you may also have the opportunity to work from our beautiful offices - 1 located in Downtown Toronto and the other in Halifax.

Culture and Diversity

Wattpad is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate. Period. 

Wattpad welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. We have taken a leadership position on creating a culture and an organization that truly values diversity. We are committed to fostering a global team that reflects the diversity of the Wattpad community. At Wattpad, we believe cultural fit doesn’t mean culturally identical, and diversity of thought helps us to challenge one another to think big and think differently. We consider employment applicants without regard to age, race, colour, national origin, citizenship, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, marital status, disability status or any other protected status.

If you have any special needs or accessibility requirements, please let us know. We will do our utmost to accommodate, in accordance with applicable local legislation.

Don’t meet all the requirements? Studies show women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs if they do not meet all the qualifications. Therefore, in an effort to build a more diverse workplace, we encourage you to apply anyways. You might actually be the right person or you may be a good fit for a number of other openings we currently have.