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About XWP

XWP has collaborated on some of the most ambitious and successful WordPress projects and partnered with the likes of Google, News Corp, and Penske Media Corporation (PMC) to bring richer technologies and delightful user experiences to the open web. 

Our team of 55+ experts (from 20+ countries and 6 continents) enjoy challenging work, service-focused and collaborative teammates, and many opportunities to grow and learn. We have a passion and enthusiasm for what we do and a sincere care for each other and our clients.

We are looking for the right person to join us to lead and grow our engineering team, supporting delivery of exceptional software and great client experiences, within a supportive and growth-oriented environment.

Who You Are

• Your natural bias is towards servant leadership and empowering your colleagues to solve problems well.
• Your active listening skills and empathy cultivate psychological safety in your workplace.
• You are fueled by a balanced blend of humility and confidence.
• You appreciate order and efficiency, but have an action-oriented approach.
• You have an appetite for learning and self-development.
• You value autonomy and have the self-management skills to operate dependably in a fully-remote role.

What You’ve Done

• This isn’t your first time managing a team of engineers. You’ve spent more than a few years developing, coaching, and mentoring developers and growing technical leaders
• You’ve actively participated in hiring and onboarding new engineers into agile development teams and worked to build and document scalable processes and documentation.
• Your hands-on background in software engineering and architecture has prepared you for the technical requirements of this role. 

What You’ll Do Here

Grow strong engineering leaders and engineers

• Champion learning & development opportunities for our engineering team
• Cultivate a culture of knowledge sharing, mentoring, and professional growth
• Coach our engineering team on personal effectiveness, great teamwork, and wise leadership

Support our engineering recruiting and scheduling

• Guide the selection of engineers for Delivery teams
• Coordinate the continuing development of our code challenges, technical interview approach, and overall evaluation of engineers in the recruitment process.
• Grow our reputation as experts and as a desirable place to work, making positive connections with future team members

Manage engineering teams

• Help ensure engineering teams are set up for success on projects
• Provide proactive support to engineering leaders to help ensure project success and coach to resolution when they escalate problems for support
• Maintain focus on coaching and empowering teams with the support and tools they need to solve their own problems well and grow their problem-solving abilities

Assist with client account management

• Facilitate (and complete as necessary) engineering estimations (velocity-based) in collaboration with Head of Delivery to support the sales process and set teams up for success
• Support Head of Delivery and Sales Team in creating a great client experience and loyalty and resolving client-experience issues

What Success Looks Like

• Projects delivering to our engineering standards and client expectations without needing significant support from outside the team
• Engineers feeling they have meaningful career and professional development opportunities at XWP
• Effective estimation of engineering effort for projects, reducing surprises and resetting expectations early and smoothly when needed
• Attracting and effectively evaluating the engineers we need
• Having the trust and confidence of the engineering team
• Leading by example and treating others with respect

Payscale & Benefits

• Trust and support from your colleagues (we look out for each other and work together towards our shared goals and vision)
• The rewards of a highly collaborative culture (we’re a team, not a working group)
• The joys of remote work done right: schedule flexibility, skip the commute, more time for family and interests outside of work
• The chance to play an important part in helping XWP achieve its full potential and make a meaningful difference for our clients, team members and the open web.
• An expected salary range of USD $125,000 to $150,000, profit sharing, paid leave, Unleash+ allowance of $2,500 per year to enrich your life, and other benefits.

Are You Intrigued?

Apply now and tell us about yourself, what this role will mean to you, and why you are who we want to work with. 

If you are not the one we are looking for, please share this with anyone you know who might be!

Time zone: (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time +/- 4 hours

Join us as we work together to solve some of the most interesting and challenging engineering problems in the WordPress space through our partnerships with major publishers and technology companies

As a Lead Engineer (Senior Engineer and Architect), you will be responsible for helping define and develop the technical vision of the projects you contribute to and ensuring the code being delivered is of substantial quality. In practice this means estimating effort, defining and architecting technical solutions, leading the delivery of high quality code efficiently and within budget, with excellent verbal and written communication — while adhering to our values, Agile methodologies, coding best practices, and established organizational processes.

Areas of Focus

• Define and deliver solutions to Client-prioritized deliverables
• Lead, mentor, and support other Engineers
• Enforce coding best practices and testing requirements
• Team and Client project-specific communication
• Estimate effort to complete user stories & tasks

Accountabilities

• Take responsibility for the engineering success of your project(s)
• Contribute to estimation/effort level for all tickets in the backlog
• Work closely with others to develop solutions
• Ensure the delivery of quality code, on time, and as estimated
• Review and write unit, integration, and regression tests when appropriate
• Conduct architectural peer reviews for code created by other Engineers
• Participate in Backlog Grooming, Sprint Planning and Sprint Review meetings
• Deploy code and setup build and test environments
• Follow and help ensure coding best practices
• Follow Agile SCRUM methodologies
• Follow and help enforce organizational processes
• Be a supportive team member and leader
• Be candid and respectful
• Have a growth mindset

Payscale

This is a senior-level role, with a typical pay range of USD $50 to $70 per hour for full-time contractors or a salary for employees of $90,000 to $125,000 with benefits, depending on proven experience level and engagement terms.

Work Environment

This is a remote role working as a part of a global, distributed team spanning 5 continents. Most of your work will be asynchronous, with communication via Slack, JIRA, and Github, with a few video meetings per week. Most Client teams are located in North America, so expect some of your work time to overlap with North American working hours. Our project teams may include a Lead Engineer/Architect, UX Architect, Product Owner, Project Manager, Quality Analyst, and 1-4 additional Engineers. Engineers typically work on 1-2 projects at a time.

XWP is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all team members.

Job requirements

This is a full-stack engineering role, modern frontend experience is often needed alongside traditional PHP backend expertise. We expect that you will have significant experience with most of the following areas of technology and the ability to quickly learn and close any gaps that you encounter while engaged.

• WordPress at scale
• PHP, HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript
• React.js
• AMP Technology
• Object Oriented Programming
• Gutenberg 
• WP-CLI and WP-REST-API
• RESTful Services and APIs
• SQL and NoSQL databases
• Linting PHP and JavaScript

We expect you to have a good working knowledge and some experience with most of the following:

• Setting up CI/CD workflows with Travis CI and GitHub
• E2E testing and frameworks like PHPUnit, QUnit, and Mocha
• Build-tools like Grunt, Gulp, and WebPack
• Docker and Vagrant
• Package management tools like NPM and Composer
• Transpiling ES6 to ES5 using Babel
• CSS Preprocessors like SASS
• Git and SVN version control systems
• Developing responsive interfaces
• Debugging for a wide range of browsers and devices
• Extending interfaces with JavaScript

You will also want to have these characteristics:

• Highly organized, motivated, and execution-oriented
• Self-starter comfortable working in a highly technical environment
• Demonstrated ability for continuous learning, creativity, and problem solving
• Ability to work effectively and dependably in remote environments
• Confidence effectively presenting well-reasoned options to decision makers
• Ability to make a strong case while listening and remaining open to other perspectives

Time zone: (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time +/- 4 hours