(Inherits the role expectations of a Engineering Director)
A VP, Engineering is a passionate technical and management leader of the entire engineering organization and typically manages engineering directors and other leaders. They continuously set engineering-wide strategy, quality, and improvement goals and partner with leaders company-wide to set and deliver on company goals. A VP, Engineering typically has at least 12 years of engineering-wide and business leadership experience including managing multiple cross-functional teams.
- Identifies capabilities needed and recruits engineering leaders (managers/directors/principals/leads) across the department.
- Provides clear expectations, direction, and support to engineering leaders.
- Communicates common engineering vision, strategy, and technical direction across engineering and related functions (product, design, data, business).
- Builds strong relationships and fosters communication with leaders and others across functions (product, design, data, business, operations, etc).
- Ensures that there is regular participation in the engineering community through conference talks, blog posts, and open source project contributions.
- Sets clear expectations across the engineering organization and with those outside the engineering organization.
- Advocates for the engineering organization and holds the organization accountable.
- Solves organization and system-level problems with other leaders.
- Empowers the engineering organization with the practices, relationships, and tools to understand their customers.
- Guides teams and their leaders to set aggressive OKRs and goals to maximize the ability of teams to continually deliver impact more efficiently.
- Identifies and drives company-wide initiatives to continuously improve team delivery, efficiency, and value.
- Understands and clearly communicates company wide initiatives and when they will be delivered to the entire engineering team.
- Develops, communicates, and delivers on strategic engineering initiatives and solutions.
- Connects team members to company-wide opportunities so they can be pushed out of their comfort zone and continuously improve.
- Works horizontally and vertically to build relationships and collaborate cross-functionally and across senior leadership.
- Is fueled by an enormous sense of fulfillment in helping others learn, improve, and have impact.
- Deeply understands business priorities and goals and then develops and communicates subsequent engineering priorities across all engineering groups.
- Collaborates with other department leaders (VPs, GMs, etc) to set cross-department priorities for cross-functional teams.
- Understands the impact that decisions have on team OKRs and goals and ensures that decisions made empower and unblock teams so they can achieve their goals.