Vice President, Engineering

Job Description

The Vice President, Engineering for NPR's Digital division will help grow and scale a thriving team of more than 50 engineers that cover a range of domain expertise - including full stack, front-end, mobile, dev ops, test automation and QA and bears responsibility for developing and supporting a suite of world-class digital products and systems on behalf of NPR and its Member stations. They provide strategic direction and mentorship, while also playing a leading role in defining and communicating an architectural vision for the next generation of technical and infrastructural systems used within NPR and across the public media digital ecosystem. They will provide a leading role in creating and executing a technical strategy to grow the business, defining and communicating engineering management best practices, and introducing new things like architectural reviews.

This role partners closely with the other leaders of the digital leadership team, including the VP, Product and the VP, Design, while collaborating with other leaders across NPR as well as with NPR Member stations and other public media organizations. This individual will be the strategic and operational leader of the Technology team, providing direct and ongoing input into the product roadmap and helping to decide, articulate, and prioritize the build of new features and products while ensuring continued improvement and maintenance of existing services and applications. This executive will be the voice of the technology team in service of the division's mission to anticipate and serve the changing needs of a new generation of audio listeners and news consumers.

Why Work at NPR Matters

Across our organization, we're building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success.

Responsibilities
• Set the vision for all of NPR's software development practices in support of its digital portfolio.
• Structure, empower and guide technology teams, ensuring a healthy creative dynamic, clear lines of accountability, optimal effectiveness and strong morale.
• Develop a team culture focused on accountability, rigor and excellence, while respecting and accommodating the individual needs of staff to maintain healthy work-life balances.
• Embrace and implement a commitment to building a culture rooted in the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion within the Digital Media team and across the entire NPR organization.
• Partner with the team to set standards for improving overall code quality, maintainability, security, scalability, team collaboration and productivity, and monitor achievements against those standards.
• Ensure the effective operation and maintenance of all applications, including development, troubleshooting, support, triage and quality assurance.
• Represent NPR and serves as driver and thought leader in ongoing efforts among public media organizations to define and implement a shared model for publishing, CRM, data collection, hosting and other elements of digital infrastructure.
• Align digital technology stack to other enterprise-level efforts in use at NPR.
• Partner with other thought leaders in the division, tracks the state of the art of digital technology, leads the evaluation and identifies and advocates for new, enhanced or replacement technologies and practices.
• Build strong working relationships across NPR and the public radio system to ensure that services meet customer expectations against service-level agreements, and are developed according to NPR's architectural direction and infrastructure plans.
• Collaborate with internal clients and business colleagues to manage demand for services, identify and set standards for modernizing our technology stack, and ensuring their delivery.
• Present and evangelize systems, processes and products both internally and externally, including for funders, management and non-technical audiences.
• Establish and manage relationships with consultants, vendors, outside temporary services and professional services; negotiates statements of work and business terms with suppliers; and works with business development and legal departments to negotiate contracts with suppliers.
• Manage technology budget, with special ongoing focus on personnel, vendor and capital expenditures.
• Provide direction and work with managers to optimize recruiting and hiring efforts.
• Work with managers and other division leaders on strategies to maintain strong talent retention.
• Serve as a technical resource and subject-matter expert to member stations and partners.
• Lead ongoing assessment and adjustment of the systems used to respond to critical situations in a 24x7x365 environment.

Required Skills
• Strong competency in software development methodologies; 10-15 years experience in software development with a mid-size to large organization.
• Superior interpersonal skills and a demonstrated ability to influence and work effectively with people individually and within groups.
• Empathetic leader. Outstanding leadership and managerial skills including talent development, coaching, mentoring, objective setting and team motivation.
• Excellent verbal and written communications, including the ability to explain technical concepts and practices to non-specialist audiences.
• Strong aptitude for documentation, scheduling, developing tasks, and managing budgets and resources to achieve target dates.
• Strong background in systems architecture and design.
• Demonstrated background in project and risk management.
• Experience with test plan design and implementation including QA and testing.
• Understanding of the following tools, methodologies and languages: agile software development, test-driven development, cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud Platform), continuous integration and deployment practices (Docker, Kubernetes), web technologies (Python, Java, Node.js, PHP), client-server technologies (RESTful strategies) and mobile technologies (iOS, Android) - with an eagerness to learn about new and unfamiliar technologies.
• Demonstrated background in managing a portfolio of systems of varying ages, from legacy to greenfield.
• Experience and ability to understand what it takes to drive innovation and transformation in a matrixed, interconnected and multi-dimensional media organization. Ability to exercise the patience, persistence and clarity needed to positively affect change.

Preferred Skills
• Experience delivering large-scale, multi-year technical projects in a federated system with multiple stakeholders.
• Experience with open source products and development methodology.

Want more NPR? Explore the stories behind the stories on our NPR Extra blog. Get social with NPR Extra on Facebook and following @NPRExtra and #NPRLife on Twitter and Instagram. Find more career opportunities at NPR.org/careers and on Twitter at @NPRJobs.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gw7vnn-3-135-190-101-42 in your application.