VP, Engineering

Are you an experienced leader who is well-versed in technical architecture looking for a role where you can truly impact product strategy? Do you consider security one of your highest priorities? Are you driven to be a coach and mentor, working with and growing a team of talented architects and engineers? Does the idea of joining a fast-paced and rapidly growing company excite you? You’re looking to do meaningful work, collaborate with incredible people, and be challenged—and you’ll find all of that at Thinkific!

Working with the CTO, the mission of the VP of Engineering is focused on delivering velocity and value in close partnership with our Product Organisation. With a focus on strategy, people and process you will devise the plans to ensure implementation while supporting the continued growth and performance of the engineering team. This is an opportunity to rapidly build and scale a team with true impact and purpose. The job description below will give you a great idea of what to expect in the role and who we’re looking for, but our CTO has also shared a closer look at this role and our Engineering team on our Culture blog.

In this role, you will:

Build on a culture of empowerment and success in your team
Engage in the product roadmap development process by partnering with product management and other functions across the business such as sales, marketing, design, and support with the goal of determining relative priority and order of execution
Engage in strategic planning by setting annual and quarterly objectives for the Engineering department
Experience setting high level Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) within the context of the entire Engineering organization
Articulate strategic direction to the Director of Engineering in order to facilitate day-to-day execution needed to achieve goals
Work closely with the Director of Design and VP of Product to ensure alignment of efforts
Drive goals with stakeholders across our organization to build world-class services through productivity and efficiency that aligns with customer value creation and builds a culture of delivering results
Engage and align top talent through strong recruitment, mentoring, and hands-on software engineering leadership
Drive recruitment and leveling-up talent on your team by creating a long-term hiring plan to ensure that Engineering is resourced to achieve the goals outlined by the roadmap
Collaborate with your peers and management to standardize methods and processes across engineering
Inspire your teams with your in-depth knowledge and understanding of project requirements and business objectives
Seek development opportunities and mentor team leads to excel and grow in their roles
Define and consistently report on key metrics around the performance of the Engineering department

To be successful in this role, you must:

Have 10+ years of experience in product development, specifically in a software engineering role
Demonstrate 5+ years experience leading a software engineering team, ideally managing a team of people leaders and helping to scale the Engineering function
Have past success working in hyper-growth environments & scaling up operations
Read our How we build at Thinkific blog and are familiar with Thinkific’s tech stack
Be experienced with agile development and planning processes
Have In-depth knowledge of programming languages and product architecture/design
Be entrepreneurial, love the start-up work ethic and have a propensity towards servant leadership
Demonstrate strong leadership skills with a record of mentoring team members
Have experience defining and tracking key Engineering metrics including team velocity and hiring targets

You might be the person we’re looking for if you:

Are eager to learn and grow—you’ve likely attended post-secondary education, continue to seek opportunities to level up your skills or have equivalent professional experience in a similar role

Have experience working on a SaaS product hosted in the cloud using AWS
Are comfortable leading a team of more than 100 engineers
Have a strong background working in high volume web applications

Bonus points if you:

Have previous experience in the online learning space
Are familiar with SR&ED and/or IRAP
Have experience with GDPR / CDPA / SOC2 / CSA Star / PCI