VP /Director of Engineering London, England
Job description
We're looking for VP/Director of Engineering for our amazing Engineering team of 20 (and growing), working on an audio platform for children built on top of the latest technologies spanning HW, Embedded SW, Microservices/APIs, Mobile, Web and Data.
The Position:
You'll need to believe in magic but understand all the skill and team effort behind it.
Technology is a key ingredient in Yoto's formula to bring smiles to the faces of children and parents across the globe. We have an amazing team of engineers with skills ranging from PCB design to CSS design; all in love with what they do. As VP of Engineering, your ultimate goal is to bring out the best in everyone and (gently) push them to their limits. You'll be making sure all teams work and collaborate efficiently whilst constantly balancing the tightrope act of speed vs. quality. You'll need to see into the future in order to foster innovation and support the right personal and professional development for the team.
You'll be joining us in a defining moment when our culture and beliefs are crystallizing and you will help us attract talent for our quest of building a household brand with a world-class engineering team.
This role is distinct from our Chief Technical Officer (who is also our Co-Founder) but will work very closely. The CTO will focus more on strategic technology direction, while the VP of Engineering will be responsible for day-to-day management and oversight of the engineering team.
What you'll be doing:
- Lead a team of 20 Engineers and Technical Experts
- Grow team and ensure we continue to hire top talent that reinforces and complements our existing skill set
- Foster our engineering team culture, keeping everyone challenged whilst thriving and enjoying their work
- Coach and mentor team members and establish a learning framework for personal development
- Oversee team organisation, practices, and processes to provide maximum efficiency at different stages of scale
- Evangelise the technical strategy for Yoto Engineering and steer the team towards an agreed vision
- Promote Yoto Engineering within the tech community
- Evaluate technology platforms and share knowledge for new projects
- Work with senior leadership across the company, ensure roadmaps take into account technical innovation, as well as sustainable long term technology strategy
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Ensure our platform is performant, reliable, and secure without being becoming overly complex.
What you'll bring:
- Previous success leading multiple teams across different technology domains
- Experience in scaling and structuring engineering teams with full autonomy in a product-centric organisation
- Ability to lead through influence, context and motivation rather than control
- Make-things-happen attitude; confident with introducing change and taking people on that journey with relative ease
- Capability to attract and hire top talent fast, understanding market conditions
- Clear communication relevant to the audience, comfortable speaking publicly to promote the company and the engineering team
- Collaborative leadership skills - embedding Yoto Engineering smoothly amongst other team in the business
- Track record of unlocking individuals' and teams' potential through learning opportunities
- A resourcefulness and ability to get creative with what levels you have available to you
- Broad knowledge of technologies, platforms, frameworks across the entire stack and the latest trends
- Ability to think big picture and long-term but still happy to roll your sleeves up and do whatever it takes to make your team successful
- Excellent understanding of programming and SW development paradigms and best practices.
Tech landscape:
Some of the technologies from our stack: AWS Lambda, MongoDB, Serverless, Node.js, React.JS, Bitbucket Pipelines, CI/CD, Jest, Auth0, FreeRTOS, GCP, BigQuery, Kotlin, Swift, Jamstack on Netlify, Shopify, Cypress, Typescript. Performance, Accessibility and UX tooling.
What we offer in return:
- Generous EMI share options - we're all invested in Yoto's success
- Hybrid working with a choice based approach - we would love you to come into the office as much as you see fit in order to fulfill the requirements of the role
- A Work from Anywhere policy giving you the opportunity to work from a different location for a temporary period
- 25 days' holiday per year, plus bank holidays
- Yoto player and starter pack of cards
- 2x volunteer days a year
- Central London office in Kings Cross (if UK based)
- A collaborative tech-focused creative environment
- Company socials and celebrations, including our annual YotoFest
About Yoto:
Yoto is inspiring the next generation of independent, creative minds.
Our screen-free audio players let kids listen, learn and play at their own pace. All while making sure they're safe to explore what inspires them.
The award-winning Yoto Player launched in early 2020 and quickly found a home on the world's play mats, kitchen counters and bedside tables. It was later named one of TIME Magazine's Top 100 Inventions of 2020. Yoto Mini, our portable player, launched in late 2021 and has accompanied kids on countless adventures. It won a D&AD pencil in 2022.
Our Card Store has 1,000+ titles from some of the world's best creators, publishers and labels - think LEGO, Disney, Marvel, Roald Dahl and Sony. We also create Yoto Originals like this one (https://uk.yotoplay.com/products/brainbots-biggest-ideas-1). Oh, and this one too (https://yotoplay.com/collections/library/products/lets-move)!
We're a Series A tech company with a well-funded and fast-growing international team. Our offices are in London and New York, and we also have a small but perfectly formed team based in France. We have in-house expertise in hardware and software, technology development, product, marketing, commercial and retail.
We're excited to build and develop a tight-knit and energetic team to help make Yoto the next great family brand!
Flexible working and autonomy are key to life at Yoto. We support working parents because we know that life and work need to work together. And just as we share audio content from a diverse community of creators, we also strive to build an inclusive team. Our passionate DE&I group raises new voices, beliefs, and perspectives to help everyone at Yoto feel heard. Check out our website for more info on our approach to People and Planet (https://uk.yotoplay.com/pages/diversity-and-inclusion).
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
