The role involves leading and managing a team of engineers, ensuring high-quality software delivery, defining technical strategy, and collaborating with cross-functional teams. The director is also responsible for hiring, team management, and contributing to company initiatives.
About Us
Powered by one of the largest global newsrooms in sports media, The Athletic brings sports fans the most comprehensive stories about the teams, sports and athletes they love. The Athletic’s newsroom of 500+ full-time staff delivers in-depth coverage of hundreds of professional and college teams across more than 47 North American markets and all 20 football clubs in the English Premier League, as well as many Championship clubs.
Responsibilities
- You will be responsible for hiring additional engineers to fill out the team, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, and staffing and structuring your team to meet business needs.
- Manage your team and help them to deliver high-quality software in a fast-paced, agile, high-growth environment.
- Make technology, infrastructure, architectural, and hiring decisions to meet anticipated demands and scale.
- Evaluate trade-offs and effectively prioritize tasks within each team in alignment with strategic initiatives and company goals.
- Collaborate closely with product, design, editorial, data science, and marketing teams to define strategy and execute on roadmaps.
- Brainstorm new product ideas and improvements alongside the design and product teams while also delivering clean, performant code (this role has an expectation of staying close to the codebase).
- Hold regular 1:1s, evaluate performance, and provide consistent productive feedback.
- Help engineers learn the skills needed to advance in their career.
- Work with engineers and product managers to iterate on and improve team processes and efficiency.
- Contribute to important company-wide initiatives like diversity and inclusion, technical brand, and hiring process.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience managing an engineering team.
- Experience leading a team building both web and iOS/Android products.
- Direct experience scaling a small to medium/large team highly desired (but not required).
- Experience with some portion of our tech stack, and an appetite to learn the remainder: Javascript (React, Next.js, Node.js, Apollo/GraphQL), PHP (Wordpress), MySQL/DynamoDB, ElasticSearch, AWS.
For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company-matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs.
For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.
We are excited to learn more about you and your experience. To keep our hiring process as fair and authentic as possible, we ask that you submit your own work and not use GenAI tools to generate substantive content during the application and interview process. If you are a candidate for a technical role, we will let you know what specific tools you are permitted to use for your technical assessment.
The Athletic Media Company is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. The Athletic will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
Click here to review our Applicant Privacy Notice, which describes how and when The Athletic Media Company collects, uses, and shares certain personal information of job applicants and prospective employees.
Beware of fraudulent job recruiting schemes! Our recruiters use [email protected] exclusively, and our team members will use an email address with @theathletic.com domain. We do not conduct interviews via text or instant message and we do not ask candidates to download software, to purchase equipment through us, or to provide sensitive personally identifiable information, such as bank accounts or social security numbers. If you have been contacted by someone claiming to be a member of the recruiting/HR team at The Athletic but operating from a different email address about a job offer, please report it as potential job fraud to the law enforcement and to [email protected].
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What you need to know about the Seattle Tech Scene
Home to tech titans like Microsoft and Amazon, Seattle punches far above its weight in innovation. But its surrounding mountains, sprinkled with world-famous hiking trails and climbing routes, make the city a destination for outdoorsy types as well. Established as a logging town before shifting to shipbuilding and logistics, the Emerald City is now known for its contributions to aerospace, software, biotech and cloud computing. And its status as a thriving tech ecosystem is attracting out-of-town companies looking to establish new tech and engineering hubs.
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- Research Centers and Universities: University of Washington, Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle Children’s Research Institute
