Director of Software Engineering & Infrastructure

The role:

The Director of Engineering, Content Production & Infrastructure will lead technical strategy for Newsela's core infrastructure and content production systems and establish a collaborative culture that is future thinking and focused on building, sustainable, scalable pathways for the growth of our platform. Reporting to the Senior Director, Software Engineering you will own and manage a broad scope and multiple teams. You will partner with your cross-functional counterparts in achieving a roadmap for 2023 and help our leadership define company-wide goals to exponentially improve the experience to our teachers and students. You will collaborate with engineering directors across the organization in brainstorming and transforming various facets of an engineering organization including (but not limited to): hiring practices, job ladder and levels, performance reviews, engineering guilds, and innovation labs. You will also mentor and coach your engineering leaders in creating a growth-mindset organization that strives to improve itself continuously.

Why you’ll love this role:

• You will have the opportunity to create a strategy and vision and join a core team that impacts several areas.

• It is a broad-scope team and you will have opportunities to impact areas including Software Engineering, Design Systems, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability, DevOps, or ML Ops.

• You’ll also have the opportunity to join a fun team, with virtual get-togethers and events planned throughout the year. 

• You will have a direct impact on our customer-obsessed team who deeply cares about helping our teachers and we use quantitative and qualitative signals to measure and improve teacher and student satisfaction with our product, which will ultimately scale Newsela’s ability to bring engaging, culturally responsive learning content to K-12 classrooms nationwide.

Why you’re a great fit:

• You have 5+ years of hands-on technical leadership managing broad scope and multiple teams.

• You are a technologist at heart, and have hands-on experience with Python, Relational Databases (SQL, Postgresql), Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Native Architecture, and AWS. 

• You have led teams in one or more domains: Software Engineering, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability, DevOps, or ML Ops. 

• You do not shy away from difficult conversations and build your reports' trust and confidence to create a transparent and high-performing organization.

• You have a background in creating a technical strategy, guiding the architecture strategy, and you make it a point to dive deep into details as necessary. 

• You have experience in leading data-driven teams and you had multiple instances where data metrics drove your roadmap and product strategy.

• You are strong at partnering cross-functionally to launch key initiatives with successful collaboration.

• You are a customer-centric leader with a strong record of launches and have had your own ideas launched through a keen interest in articulating the benefits to help customers. 

• You see your role in not only helping your teams execute smoothly but in building mechanisms in growing your reports and your organization to adopt a growth mindset. 

• You occasionally take part in design reviews and push for your organization to adopt engineering excellence initiatives.

Base compensation range: $200,000 - $220,000. Total compensation for this role also includes incentive stock options, bonus, and benefits. This compensation range may be adjusted based on actual experience.

About Newsela:

Newsela takes authentic, real world content from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for K-12 classrooms. Each text is published at five reading levels, so content is accessible to every learner. Today, over 3.3 million teachers and 40 million students have registered with Newsela for content that's personalized to student interests, accessible to everyone, aligned to instructional standards, and attached to activities and reporting that hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for their work. With over 15,000 texts on our platform and multiple new texts published every day across 20+ genres, Newsela enables educators to go deep on any subject they choose.

Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

• Health & Wellness: Access to the world’s leading medical experts for healthcare (pets included!). Discounts and resources to stay healthy: mind, body, and soul.
• Work From Home: Almost all of our roles are fully remote - tec