Head of Engineering, Americas
Offer summary
Qualifications:
Extensive experience in engineering leadership and team building., Strong background in software engineering, ideally with hands-on coding experience., Proven ability to define and evolve engineering culture and processes., Experience managing managers and leading large engineering teams..Key responsibilities:
- Manage and scale the remote engineering team in the Americas.
- Collaborate with leadership to maintain and grow the company's engineering culture.
- Oversee the development and delivery of high-quality software products.
- Lead the hiring, onboarding, and development of engineering talent.
Job description
Hi 👋🏾, I’m Abhik, Ashby’s CoFounder and VP of Engineering. We’re looking for an Engineering leader who has done it all: You’ve built impressive products as an IC, you’ve built a bench of amazing Engineers, and you’ve established the cultural norms and processes of an entire Engineering department. Ashby’s success and ambition mean we’re doubling the Engineering team in the next year, and we need your experience and leadership to do it thoughtfully.
I’ll share more details once we meet.
What We’re BuildingAs engineers, we are used to tooling that makes us better at what we do. When we started Ashby, we saw the opposite with Talent Acquisition software. Recruiting teams were leveling up how they did their work, but instead of software meeting this new standard, it held them back.
Scheduling a final round is an excellent example. Recruiting teams wanted to schedule candidates faster, track interviewer preparation and quality, and do it with half the headcount. A recruiter needed to manually collect availability from the candidate, identify qualified interviewers, perform “Calendar Tetris” to find who is available to interview the candidate, schedule on the earliest date possible, and make any lastminute adjustments as availability changed. They must do this while considering the interview load on each individual and whether interviewers need to be trained and shadowing others. 🥵 TA software didn’t help.
As hiring managers, we know TA is a critical function, and as engineers, we know software can do better. So, we built and continue to build Ashby to give TA teams the highest standard of tooling. Software that’s intelligent and powerful. Software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. We want other functions and departments to be jealous of what TA teams can do with Ashby, and today they often are!
Why You Shouldn’t ApplyYou’ve always been a line manager or middle manager. You haven’t led the definition and evolution of the culture and processes of an entire Engineering department.
You’ve never managed managers. Managing other leaders is a very different ball game, and not everyone enjoys it or thrives in it – the seniority of this role won’t let you explore that.
You don’t enjoy coding or don’t find time to stay uptodate on technology. We believe great leaders are folks who were great engineers themselves. That starts with loving the craft and never giving it up.
You went into management because it was the only growth path available. We want folks who could have been Principal engineers (or were one!).
Youre happy with a team of engineers who are predominantly earlycareer or midcareer or dont thrive with ownership or autonomy. You believe that with enough guardrails, the team can get things done.
To you, a Staff or Principal Engineer is someone who spends most of their time project managing or conducting architecture reviews. You don’t believe staff and principal engineers could lead by the example they set or the leverage they create through their work.
You’re not optimistic or convinced that we can build a large engineering team that functions differently from the status quo. You think, at some size, common processes need to be implemented to ensure consistent product delivery (e.g., sprint planning, product managers writing indepth specifications). You might not say it out loud, but you think, at some size, compromises have to be made for the sake of hiring numbers or consistency.
Engineering CultureOur engineering culture is motivated by Benji’s (my Cofounder and CEO) and my belief that a small, talented team, given the right environment, can build highquality software fast (and work regular hours!). We do it through:
Minimal process with ownership over decisions normally made by product and design
Natural collaboration and deliberate communication
Investing in tools and abstractions that give us leverage
Putting effort into building a diverse team
You’ll be a critical part of figuring out how to scale these methods from 50 engineers to 100 and beyond.
Minimal Process & Lots of OwnershipThe best engineers we’ve worked with delivered reliably magical outcomes. They took customer problems and relentlessly drove them to solutions that were not only successful but often brilliant and creative. While they did this with minimal oversight, stakeholders were never in the dark as to what was going on, and no setback was a surprise.
Traditional productdevelopment processes aren’t meant for the best engineers. Their purpose is to create consistent outcomes regardless of the engineer’s skill. But, consistency comes at the expense of an engineer’s time and freedom—both ingredients necessary to generate those magical outcomes. As a result, process stifles the best engineers and doesn’t give others the opportunity to practice the behaviors that made the best engineers the “best.”
At Ashby, we want to build an environment that encourages every engineer to be their best. So, at Ashby, every Engineer runs their project. Product Managers (and Designers) build strategy, do customer research, and hand off problem briefs to Engineers. Engineers take on the rest: they research the problem, write product specs, build wireframes, and implement their solution endtoend. We rely on engineers, not process, to push information outward to the relevant folks (e.g., Product Managers) and pull folks in to help (e.g., Designers, Infra). It’s a new level of ownership for many engineers, but we’d rather an engineer fail a bit and coach up their skills than use process as a crutch. Not everyone succeeds in our culture, but those who do thrive.
Collaboration is Natural & Communication is DeliberateOur engineering team consists of lifelong learners who are talented but also humble and kind (meet them here!). These attributes create an environment where collaboration happens naturally. We combine this with research, prototyping, and written proposals to see around corners and get feedback from the team across time zones. Focus time is something that we hold sacred, and, with thoughtful and deliberate communication, engineers are in <2h meetings per week (I wrote about it here).
To drive it home, heres a recent calendar of an engineer who has been with us for over 4 years:
You’ve always been a line manager or middle manager. You haven’t led the definition and evolution of the culture and processes of an entire Engineering department.
You’ve never managed managers. Managing other leaders is a very different ball game, and not everyone enjoys it or thrives in it – the seniority of this role won’t let you explore that.
You don’t enjoy coding or don’t find time to stay uptodate on technology. We believe great leaders are folks who were great engineers themselves. That starts with loving the craft and never giving it up.
You went into management because it was the only growth path available. We want folks who could have been Principal engineers (or were one!).
Youre happy with a team of engineers who are predominantly earlycareer or midcareer or dont thrive with ownership or autonomy. You believe that with enough guardrails, the team can get things done.
To you, a Staff or Principal Engineer is someone who spends most of their time project managing or conducting architecture reviews. You don’t believe staff and principal engineers could lead by the example they set or the leverage they create through their work.
You’re not optimistic or convinced that we can build a large engineering team that functions differently from the status quo. You think, at some size, common processes need to be implemented to ensure consistent product delivery (e.g., sprint planning, product managers writing indepth specifications). You might not say it out loud, but you think, at some size, compromises have to be made for the sake of hiring numbers or consistency.
Minimal process with ownership over decisions normally made by product and design
Natural collaboration and deliberate communication
Investing in tools and abstractions that give us leverage
Putting effort into building a diverse team
You’ll be a critical part of figuring out how to scale these methods from 50 engineers to 100 and beyond.
Minimal Process & Lots of Ownership
The best engineers we’ve worked with delivered reliably magical outcomes. They took customer problems and relentlessly drove them to solutions that were not only successful but often brilliant and creative. While they did this with minimal oversight, stakeholders were never in the dark as to what was going on, and no setback was a surprise.
Traditional productdevelopment processes aren’t meant for the best engineers. Their purpose is to create consistent outcomes regardless of the engineer’s skill. But, consistency comes at the expense of an engineer’s time and freedom—both ingredients necessary to generate those magical outcomes. As a result, process stifles the best engineers and doesn’t give others the opportunity to practice the behaviors that made the best engineers the “best.”
At Ashby, we want to build an environment that encourages every engineer to be their best. So, at Ashby, every Engineer runs their project. Product Managers (and Designers) build strategy, do customer research, and hand off problem briefs to Engineers. Engineers take on the rest: they research the problem, write product specs, build wireframes, and implement their solution endtoend. We rely on engineers, not process, to push information outward to the relevant folks (e.g., Product Managers) and pull folks in to help (e.g., Designers, Infra). It’s a new level of ownership for many engineers, but we’d rather an engineer fail a bit and coach up their skills than use process as a crutch. Not everyone succeeds in our culture, but those who do thrive.
Collaboration is Natural & Communication is Deliberate
Our engineering team consists of lifelong learners who are talented but also humble and kind (meet them here!). These attributes create an environment where collaboration happens naturally. We combine this with research, prototyping, and written proposals to see around corners and get feedback from the team across time zones. Focus time is something that we hold sacred, and, with thoughtful and deliberate communication, engineers are in <2h meetings per week (I wrote about it here).
To drive it home, heres a recent calendar of an engineer who has been with us for over 4 years:
Engineering Culture
Our engineering culture is motivated by Benji’s (my Cofounder and CEO) and my belief that a small, talented team, given the right environment, can build highquality software fast (and work regular hours!). We do it through:
Required profile
Experience
Other Skills
- Team Management
- Collaboration
- Distributed Team Management
- Decision Making
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Problem Solving
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