Senior Engineering Manager

Hi there,

As Engineers in Qwilr, we have a model for how we think about effectiveness
we call "the 4Ms":

Maker - We make and run quality experiences for customers.
Mover - We move work forward, and are always improving.
Multiplier - We seek to impact the broader team, organisation and world.
Model - We represent our principles in our work and interactions.

I've loved working with the team on this understanding in my first 3 months as Head of Engineering at Qwilr, and I'm equally excited that we are taking this exciting next step to add a 5th M, "Mentor" to this list as we create a team where people grow and thrive while making an outsized impact.

I'm excited to explore working with you as we grow the Qwilr Engineering team together!

The opportunity

Here, you will have the opportunity to partner with Qwilr's Head of Engineering who has helped scale one of the most successful tech companies. Reporting directly to him, you'll lead a team that's laying significant new foundations of a powerful document platform including collaborative editing, advanced web-powered interactivity and analytical power. We're looking to not just scale the product, but the team and company, so if you're excited to contribute to the growth of a startup, read on!

We see the role of engineering manager along
the lines of the "5Ms" as Ben mentions above,
in the following shape:

Maker (building)
Maker (running)
Mover
Multiplier
Model
Mentor

We don't expect you to be an expert in all areas,
and are more interested in learning about you as a whole leader.

If you think you've got a lot of what we're looking for but aren't sure in a couple of areas, we welcome you to apply anyway :)

Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other folks in minority groups tend to only apply when they check every box. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single point above, please still get in touch. We'd love to have a chat and see if you could be a great fit.

You can find out more about diversity & inclusion at Qwilr here.

What you'll do

Leading teams and people - As a "Mentor", you'll be building teams through hiring, training, growth conversations and feedback, in addition to performance and management activities.
Delivery oversight - As a "Mover", you'll oversee planning, staffing and reliable delivery of your team's work working with Engineers assigned to lead projects. You will be your team's unblocker and champion for velocity.
Technical quality - As a leader of "Makers", you will represent the quality of your team's work and decision making and contribute to broader improvements in quality and the good fight against entropy!
Hands-on contribution - While we know you're no longer a full-time "Maker" yourself, we do expect you to be close to the team's work and ideally be hands on in the code in some capacity.
Operational excellence - At Qwilr, "Running" is as important as "Making". You'll also represent successful deployment and operation of your team's work and participate in response and ongoing improvement.
Collaborative team representation - You'll be working alongside PMs and Designers to represent your team in planning, delivery and general leadership interactions. As we are all "Makers" at Qwilr, you will also have a voice in strategy and goal setting.
Special projects - As a "Multiplier", you will drive or contribute to cross-department and cross-organisation special projects with your Engineering, Delivery and/or Leadership skills.

What you bring

Having the following skills will
help you hit the ground running:

Mentorship and empathy - You care about the people you lead and value the personal journey that each of your team member is on.
Team building - You are passionate and skilled at creating effective and high morale teams.
Expectations management - You are able to set and maintain a shared understanding of delivery feasibility and progress with internal stakeholders.
Balance of speed and adaptability - You are able to balance what is needed for the team to be fast and what is needed for the team to adapt in response to change.
Technical skills - You stay up to date technically and are able to guide good decision making and ideally make a hands-on contribution, but are also able to work with smart Engineering ICs who drive a lot of technical decisions and most of the code.

Cloud savvy - You are familiar with more than just code but the architecture and infrastructure required to run a SaaS product at scale.
You can focus a team on building this excellence into the product in partnership with senior Engineers.
Customer empathy - You seek to understand and apply the customer perspective in your work, from championing the real-customer impact of reliability and quality to contributing to customer oriented decisions.
Learning and innovation - You encourage increased "collective knowledge" through your own practices and team knowledge sharing. You build teams that innovate, are willing to experiment and try new ways of working.

WHY QWILR?

We're combining the best of documents with the best of the web.

At Qwilr we are reimagining the way businesses communicate with their clients.

We help anyone create beautiful, intuitive sales and marketing documents as web pages that look impressive and integrate seamlessly with their business (like this one!).

Our mission is to build the most effective way for customer-facing teams to communicate on the web - simply, creatively and efficiently. We make design and technology easy and enjoyable to use, so our customers can always represent their best professional self.