DuckDuckGo is an online protection company on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. The Engineering Director, Backend will lead a team of engineers, tackle complex problems, and drive technical decisions that align backend work with company objectives.
Responsibilities:
- Take ownership of complex problems impacting tens of millions of people
- Balance building things right with swiftly shipping things that matter
- Grow and accelerate a team of 30 engineers
- Identify what's slowing us down and fixing it
- Coach engineers and leaders to tackle bigger problems
- Drive hiring decisions and evolve how we work as we scale
- Hold the team accountable while creating conditions for them to succeed
- Ground technical decisions in data
- Navigate complex projects with stakeholders company-wide
- Shape roadmaps aligning backend work to top priorities across multiple company objectives
- Advise on the hardest problems and make swift calls when projects need direction
- Validate and ship a complex cross-team project globally
- Define the optimal balance of privacy-respecting ads on search results
- Explore new techniques to expand instant answer triggering
Requirements:
- 10+ years in software engineering with 4+ years in engineering leadership, including managing managers
- Expert-level backend systems knowledge with hands-on technical capability
- Moderate data analysis and machine learning experience
- Comfortable navigating ambiguity and making decisive calls on complex problems with stakeholders company-wide
- A hands-on leader who is excited to contribute directly to problem solving and get into the weeds when necessary
- Track record of coaching engineers and leaders, driving hiring decisions, and evolving team processes as organizations scale
- Experience setting multi-project roadmaps aligned to business priorities and swiftly adapting when priorities shift
- Passion for privacy and raising the standard of trust online