Vice President of Engineering

OverviewAzavea is a mission-driven technology firm based in Philadelphia that uses geospatial data to build web-based software and data analytics tools. As a B Corporation, our mission is to use advanced geospatial technology for civic, social, and environmental impact. Most of our work serves local and federal government agencies, non-profit organizations, and impact-related projects for commercial companies.  We build custom web applications, perform geospatial analysis, and contribute to open-source projects. We have particular expertise in climate change, water, conservation, elections, and infrastructure, and we are engaged in a wide range of other interesting projects. Check out our career website for more about Azavea.
Azavea is looking for a Vice President of Engineering who is passionate about technology that delivers a positive impact and looks to lead the technical direction of a company. This role will work closely with the Executive team as well as the 4 engineering teams at Azavea. 
Goal of this role:  • Lead the company in designing and implementing state-of-the-art geospatial web applications.  • Cultivate high standards of engineering excellence.  • Coach and mentor engineers to support their professional development.  • Contribute to advancing organization-level projects and initiatives.

Responsibilities and Activities:

Technical Skill and Judgment

• Drive adoption of improved engineering practices. This may involve the facilitation of knowledge sharing between engineering teams to cultivate company-wide best practices.
• Research new technologies and tools, make thoughtful recommendations, and clearly communicate trade-offs of adoption.
• Collaborate with engineering leaders to make recommendations about team staffing levels and hiring requirements.
• Identify opportunities for force multipliers that increase the productive output of the engineering organization.
• Contribute to client proposals that are strategic and/or will have significant organizational impact, due to their size, technology options, or cross-team impact.
• Provide backup and support to Engineering Leads, stand in for them in their absence, and provide a sounding board for difficult questions or conflicts.

Leadership

• Integrate the company’s mission and values into decision-making.
• Support diversity, equity, and inclusion objectives and initiatives through people decisions, management practice, and other activities.
• Work with other executives to identify opportunities for internal R&D projects that will open new opportunities, advance our technical capabilities, and help the company operate more effectively.
• Represent the company in public forums through writing and speaking about our work and what you are learning. 
• Coach and mentor Engineering Leads to support their professional development and cultivate professional development opportunities for engineers, in general.

Executive

• Collaborate with other executives to develop and implement organization-level projects and initiatives. In some initiatives the VP of Engineering will lead, and in others this role will support.
• Identify and exploit opportunities for improving and growing the organization.

Professional Development

• Allocate time and actively engage in learning and professional development activities that set a high standard for knowledge and excellence both inside and outside the organization.
• Actively share both failures and lessons learned through formal and informal means.

Skills and qualifications:

• Most recently held a senior role in a technology, software, or technology-enabled services organization and have experience in one or more senior engineering or technical managerial roles.
• Demonstrate clear understanding of and alignment with organizational mission and values.
• Have experience with organizations that build web applications.
• Demonstrate proficiency with core web technologies.
• Demonstrate love of learning and continual improvement.
• Demonstrate commitment to delivering engineering excellence within operational constraints.
• Be technically flexible, and allergic to dogmatism.
• Be familiar with using and querying relational databases.
• Have experience with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or another cloud service provider.
• Have a firm understanding of services based architecture and distributed systems.
• Demonstrate the ability to define and estimate engineering features and tasks accurately.
• Demonstrate solid communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues within a team environment.

Additional experience we find valuable (but not required):

• Demonstrating your open source or other community service contributions.
• Experience with GIS.

Reasons to join us:

• Help build a mission-driven company that is a leader in the use of technology for positive impact.
• Shape an established organization for the next generation of growth and leadership.
• Contribute to an open knowledge ecosystem through open source, open data, and open standards.
• Lead and work with a group of people that are among the kindest, most thoughtful, and most capable people in the software world.

A note on hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic Due to regulations in Philadelphia and our concern for the health and safety of our team, we expect to conduct most of the candidate interviews remotely. The majority of our colleagues generally work out of our Philadelphia office, but while our office has re-opened, most of us aren’t in the office full-time. Depending on the circumstances at the time of hiring, we are able to support remote on-boarding, including shipping relevant materials and a laptop to your home. We are fortunate to have invested in meaningful work-from-home tools and processes over the years, and have been able to continue providing a secure, flexible, and safe work environment for all of our colleagues. We ask for your patience as we adapt our hiring process as well, and are happy to answer any questions or concerns about the process.   
Office and BenefitsOur Philadelphia headquarters is located in a brightly lit office on the 5th floor of a converted factory building in the Callowhill neighborhood, a short walk from Center City, the Reading Terminal Market, and SEPTA subway and regional rail stations. For bicyclists, we have in-house bike parking, showers, and lockers. The office itself is assembled as an open office plan with several smaller rooms for team meetings and concentration time. You get your own desk with a high-end Linux workstation or Apple laptop and extra monitors. We have flex-time to deal with personal stuff, and most people work a 40 - 45 hour week on a regular schedule. After the first six months, our staff can also spend up to 10% of their time on an open source, professional development, or R&D project. Recent 10% time projects include a product development learning group, developing scripts to automate processes, testing workload estimation tools, and developing improvements to our internal tools.
We offer a salary commensurate with skills and experience. We are seeking a senior level software engineer with management experience, but will consider people with relevant backgrounds with comparable experience. Azavea’s salaries for Vice President of Engineering range from $138,000 - $164,000. Our benefits package includes:  • Fully subsidized health care, dental care, prescription plan, including for spouse/partner and children  • Fully subsidized life and long-term disability insurance, plus voluntary short-term disability insurance  • Medical reimbursement plan to cover what the health insurance does not  • 401k retirement plan with company  match  • Almost 4 weeks paid vacation plus additional paid sick/personal time off  • Flexible work schedule  • Family and medical leave  • Paid maternity and paternity leave  • Child care subsidy  • Paid time off for voting and volunteering  • Education and training assistance plan  • Student loan assistance  • Public transit and biking reimbursement plans  • Monthly guest lectures with lunches on the company  • 10% time for research or learning projects  • Profit-sharing bonus plan  • Financial transparency through an open book policy  • Kind, capable and thoughtful colleagues
We welcome qualified candidates from all walks of life and value diversity in our company. We prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, veteran status, military service, disability unrelated to job requirements, marital status, or domestic partner status.