Director of Engineering, Mobile Applications

Director Engineering, Mobile Apps
Location: Remote work
Duration: Full time

Summary:
The Director of Engineering will lead technical efforts in United Parks' digital transformation. This position is responsible for mobile apps across 12 theme parks, and focused on the in-park customer experience and revenue through digital platforms. Reporting to the Chief Digital Officer, this position will take a leadership role in building and managing a growing team of developers and QA staff. The Director of Engineering will also influence broader digital/tech strategy and drive innovative solutions across the company.

Essential Duties:
• Enterprise Architect: Lead the architectural design and integration of complex solutions that seamlessly interact with multiple legacy systems, ensuring scalability and future-proofing.
• Team Leadership: Mentor and guide a team of 10-15 remote engineers (mix of U.S. & nearshore) across native iOS/Android development, React-based web interfaces, API/services development, and quality assurance. Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner with internal teams such as infrastructure, product management, and UX/UI design, as well as external vendors and platforms, to deliver high-quality, usercentric digital solutions.
• Feature Ideation and Development: Spearhead the ideation, development, and implementation of features related to ticketing, day planning, interactive maps & navigation, in-park purchasing (including mobile food ordering), loyalty programs, payment processing, and third-party partner integrations.
• Performance Monitoring and Optimization: Utilize tools like Datadog, Quantum Metric, and Optimizely to monitor application performance in real-time, identifying and resolving issues proactively to ensure a seamless customer experience.
• Software Development Lifecycle Improvement: Continuously enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the software development lifecycle through the implementation of QA automation, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices, and other industry best practices.
• Release Management and Deployment: Oversee the release management process, ensuring robust CI/CD pipelines are in place for seamless deployments to cloud environments. Manage cloud hosting infrastructure to support high availability, performance, and security.
• Hands-on Development: Maintain a hands-on approach to development, with the ability to step in as an individual contributor to tackle complex challenges or drive key feature development when necessary.
• Prioritization and Roadmapping: Collaborate with functional leaders across UX, Analytics, Operations, and Product Management to define strategy, establish roadmaps, prioritize initiatives, and allocate resources effectively to meet business objectives.

Requirements:
• Experience: 8+ years of progressive experience in engineering management within respected consumer focused businesses such as eCommerce, marketplaces, or subscription services, with a strong focus on mobile app development and mobile specific experiences.
• Leadership: Proven experience leading remote and diverse teams of 10-15 professionals, including roles such as native app developers, front-end web developers, and QA engineers.
• Development Methodologies: Deep expertise in modern development methodologies, including Lean and Agile, with a track record of successfully implementing these practices.
• Project Lifecycle Management: Expert understanding of the entire project lifecycle, from initiation and requirements gathering to analysis, design, development, release, version control, automated testing, and deployment management. Experience with ground-up implementations is essential.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Demonstrated ability to leverage large datasets to analyze and improve product capabilities, benefiting multiple user groups. Strong proficiency in making data-informed decisions through A/B testing, user testing, and performance monitoring.
• Leadership & Communication: Exceptional leadership, management, and communication skills, with experience in building and managing relationships with executive and senior management levels. Ability to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical senior leaders with clarity and precision.
• Execution & Strategy: Strong ability to meet deadlines and manage a heavy workload while maintaining visibility into workflows and portfolios. Flexibility to shift easily between big-picture strategy and handson execution as needed.

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