Director of Engineering, Operations Tools Suite

At Serve Robotics, we’re reimagining how things move in cities. Our personable sidewalk robot is our vision for the future. It’s designed to take deliveries away from congested streets, make deliveries available to more people, and benefit local businesses.

The Serve fleet has been delighting merchants, customers, and pedestrians along the way in Los Angeles while doing commercial deliveries. We’re looking for talented individuals who will grow robotic deliveries from surprising novelty to efficient ubiquity.

Who We Are

We are tech industry veterans in software, hardware, and design who are pooling our skills to build the future we want to live in. We are solving real-world problems leveraging robotics, machine learning and computer vision, among other disciplines, with a mindful eye towards the end-to-end user experience. Our team is agile, diverse, and driven. We believe that the best way to solve complicated dynamic problems is collaboratively and respectfully.

Serve Robotics is seeking a Director of Engineering, Operations Tools Suite to oversee the development of software powering our daily delivery operations; solutions that include real-time fleet management software, mobile applications for field agents, and delivery logistics optimization tools. The Operations Tools Suite is a mission-critical set of solutions relied on daily by our Operations team to achieve our delivery targets, customer satisfaction goals and growth objectives.

In this role you will provide leadership and direction to a highly technical software engineering team while directly contributing time coding, designing, and reviewing code, designs and specifications. You will work closely with product and operations to prioritize the work, and you’ll hire, allocate the work, and support your team to deliver features from concept to production. Your product goals will be to ensure that our systems are performant and reliable while meeting the demands of nationwide expansion, and that your team is contributing to ongoing innovation in our automated delivery logistics.

The ideal candidate will have a strong track record of hands-on leadership of small and highly technical software engineering teams. You will have experience hiring, mentoring and coaching Sr. and Staff level engineers, building a high-performance, collaborative team. You are motivated by delivering on business critical needs, in this case, supporting our delivery partners and internal delivery operations as we scale our robotic delivery fleet.

Responsibilities

• Managing the Team: Identify the hiring needs, run the hiring process for your team, champion the onboarding process for new team members, and be the primary person responsible for their professional growth and success.

• Technical Leadership: Mentor a small team of frontend and backend engineers, establish best practices, and lead by example through hands-on coding and code reviews.

• Deeply Technical Full-stack Experience: The ideal candidate will have worked across the stack from Frontend (fluency in browser JavaScript, especially React, Vue.js or similar) to Backend (we mostly use Python and Elixir), with working knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP). Experience with mobile app development is a plus.

• Platform Ownership: Own the Operations Tools Suite, designing, owning and ensuring the platform delivers a world-class user experience, meets SLAs and reliability targets, and evolves to meet new  business requirements.

• Collaboration: Partner with product managers, operations teams, and other stakeholders to align technical solutions with business objectives. Work with external partners and vendors as one of their main points of contact, representing both your team and the business.

• Quality & Process Improvement: Champion code quality, testing strategies, and continuous integration/deployment. Proactively seek opportunities to streamline workflows and enhance team productivity.

• Future-Proofing: Experience staying current with emerging technologies and industry best practices, integrating relevant tools and techniques to keep our platforms cutting-edge.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience in software development including leading small teams of Sr. and/or Staff level fullstack Software Engineers.

Hiring, Leadership & Team Management with a Hands-on Approach

• Experience growing and managing small and technically advanced engineering teams, delivering from early concepts to production quality releases.

• Strong communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Comfortable leading by example and spending time coding, brainstorming and designing solutions with your team, and reviewing code and specifications.

Technical Experience:

• 4+ years of experience in full-stack development with a passion for delivering user experiences that are streamlined, intuitive and functional.

• Fluency in browser JavaScript, especially React, Vue.js or similar.

• Good understanding of more advanced JavaScript topics, such as WebSockets, WebRTC, browser application performance and so on.

• Backend experience, either directly or in close collaboration with backend teams (we mostly use Python and Elixir).

What Makes You Stand Out

• Strong track record in up-leveling software engineers (and first-time managers) on your team in both their technical and leadership strengths.

• Experience working with large external partners, vendors and customers, representing both the engineering teams and the business.

• Experience running cross-functional teams with multiple domains of expertise and, possibly, developing multiple product streams in parallel.

• Ability to partner with Product Management and Design from the early concept stage, building POCs and technical breakthroughs to inform and accelerate product strategy.