Engineering Director, Backend

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