Director, Engineering

Who we are: Founded in 2001, Vivid Seats (NASDAQ: SEAT) is a leading online ticket marketplace committed to becoming the ultimate partner for connecting fans to the live events, artists, and teams they love. We believe in the power of experiences and are fiercely dedicated to building products that inspire human connections. Named as one of Built In's top places to work in 2024, we believe that our People are our greatest competitive advantage. To support our People, we have built a company culture that empowers our employees to embrace challenges, encourages unity through collaboration, and seeks to constantly evolve by leveraging data and inspiring innovation.

The Opportunity:

As the Director of Engineering B2C, you will oversee the engineering talent and technical strategy for multiple domains and technical areas focused on our consumer-facing web and e-commerce properties and the business services supporting them. This role will be directly responsible for the systems supporting our e-commerce marketplace. You'll lead multiple teams and take ownership of best practices championing our B2C offerings. As a cross-functional leader, you will ensure successful initiatives by aligning objectives, fostering collaboration and empowerment amongst teams, communicating clearly, and managing resources effectively while maintaining a strategic focus and driving towards results.

The B2C channel is our primary marketplace and is a major factor in the future growth of Vivid Seats. This leader will guide teams and technologies that enable Vivid Seats to expand features in our ticket marketplace to drive more engagement to our product. The Director of Engineering will partner with Product stakeholders, functional business leaders, and the CTO to develop our innovative product and technology vision, grow and lead the technology team, and rapidly execute the development plan.

How your role contributes to the success of Vivid Seats:

• Coach and develop individual contributors and engineering managers.
• Foster a high performing engineering culture of ownership and collaboration which attracts and retains a diverse spectrum of top engineering talent.
• Assess talent and performance, playing an integral role in onboarding top talent and helping them grow professionally.
• Own the quality, scalability, security, and performance of applications, systems, and integrations.
• Measure and improve team engagement and productivity.
• Set and drive the technical strategy and execution plan for the B2C domain as well as plan out new capabilities to allow the business to respond quickly to the market.
• Represent Vivid Seats as a brand ambassador to the technology community.
• Partner with the B2C product team to enable business value creation, as well as the stability and scalability of our solutions.
• Partner with other peers in the Software Engineering department to drive the technology strategy forward.

How your role expectations will progress as a Director of Engineering, B2C in the first 30, 90, and 180 days:

30 days in:

• Acclimate Vivid Seats' values and organizational goals to understand how your department drives initiatives forward.
• Understand your teams' contributions and potential growth areas and the needs of stakeholders that rely on your deliverables to bring business objectives to life.
• Set weekly touch points with direct reports to understand their role, motivations, and needs, building trust and leading with empathy.
• Partner with the product and UX to understand the product vision and current roadmap.
• Partner with CTO and Product leaders to align on technology vision and roadmap.
• Familiarize with the B2C technology operational metrics.

90 days in:

• Empower and coach team members to achieve personal and functional goals that correlate to department objectives.
• Develop and lead initiatives for your team that enhance process, drive innovation, and build on Vivid Seats values.
• Actively support the engineering managers and product managers to focus ahead by reviewing their rolling roadmap.
• Actively respond strategically to the B2C operational metrics by refining the technical roadmap and/or processes as required.
• Identify within the teams how ways of working can be improved with the objective of increasing velocity and results.
• Propose to the CTO a go-forward technology strategy for the teams that person is responsible for.

180 days in:

• Monitor and evolve team deliverables, individual goals, and overall performance to ensure alignment with broader initiatives of your department and the organization while coaching your team to grow skill sets.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to confirm accurate prioritization and refine processes for collaboration and best practices.
• Meaningfully contribute to department roadmap exercises that balance current needs with future strategic initiatives.
• Proactively work with the UX and product teams on the strategic technical capability roadmap to accelerate feature development.
• Be a thought leader for B2C technologies within the company, supporting and guiding other verticals in the business.

What You'll Bring:

• A proven track record of leading multiple high-performing engineering teams, preferably in the e-commerce industry.
• A proven ability to develop engineering managers and hire, retain and motivate diverse engineering teams.
• Passionate about building a customer-driven, product-focused engineering team.
• Experience developing and achieving stakeholder and engineer buy-in to execute a long-term technical strategy.
• Expertise establishing and managing teams in multiple locations.
• Demonstrable experience of partnering with product and UX teams on creating best-in-class customer-facing products.
• Several years' experience in running a blended team of full-stack developers and mobile developers.
• Several years' experience of making full-stack architectural decisions including experience with enterprise asynchronous system architecture and scaling.
• Effectively managing teams with modern web and app frameworks, as well as supporting business services and databases.
• Customer facing or consulting experience with the ability to promote and secure platform adoption.
• Experience in a fast-paced, Agile, continuous delivery and operational environment.
• Creativity, fearlessness, and an unwavering commitment to putting the customer first.
• Hands-on development experience in the B2C technology space, either web or apps at similar scale like Vivid Seats.

Vivid Seats provides competitive compensation; bonus incentives; FLEX PTO; mental health days; medical, dental, and vision insurance; 401K matching; monthly credits and discounts for attending live events; remote work and snack allowances; and a variety of additional workplace perks.

Location: Chicago, IL

We believe in a hybrid working model which provides employees the flexibility to take advantage of in-person and remote collaboration. Check out our brand new HQ office, bursting with the energy of live events fandom and the vibrancy of Chicago's rising tech scene.

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Our Commitment: We are an equal opportunity employer that values the critical importance of a diverse workforce and sense of belonging. Many of our roles have flexible requirements and we encourage you to apply regardless of whether you meet every qualification.