Senior Manager Engineering Operations

Hi there! We’re looking for a Senior Manager, Engineering Operations to join the Engineering team at Zapier. Zapier’s on a mission to make everyone more productive at work. Zapier has helped millions of people build businesses through the power of automation. The Senior Manager, Engineering Operations will play an integral role in designing, testing, and building/iterating on the Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) orgs’ practices and processes that will take our organization to the next level. You’ll work with our VP Engineering to identify and action upon the org’s biggest needs, partner with Product Ops and Design Ops to build an operations engine for the Engineering/Product/Design organizations, and lead our growing team of Agile Practitioners. We’re growing our org rapidly, and we need your help to evolve the org gracefully, enabling us to deliver maximum value to our customers. You will report to the VP of Engineering and you’ll lead a team of 6 Agile Practitioners. About You You are a master collaborator and work seamlessly with other Ops functions. You’ll partner closely in your “Ops trio,” working with your Design Ops and Product Ops counterparts to identify org problems, set success criteria, test hypotheses for how to solve these problems, and launch new processes and programs when your tests succeed. You are outcome oriented and know that a project is only complete when the problem is solved. You have helped guide an organization of our size through to the next level of maturity. Importantly, you’ve done the Engineering Operations job before (ideally at multiple companies of varying sizes). You have the ability and know-how to deeply understand our org and use your experience to guide us towards better practices and more streamlined processes. You are familiar with best practices in Engineering orgs, from Agile development to launch strategies, and your superpower is knowing when and how to implement the right tool or process in your toolkit. You are an effective team builder and leader. This isn’t your first rodeo. You have at least three years of experience as a people manager. In particular, you know when it’s appropriate to lead and set top-down guidance and vision, and when it’s time to hand over the reins and give your team autonomy to execute. Besides typical day-to-day management and career guidance, your team of senior Agile Practitioners will be looking to you to help guide their proactive Engineering Operations roadmap and help them be most effective in how they influence and roll out change in the org. You have a solid baseline in agile practices. You have at least 5 years of experience helping multiple teams improve their agile practices and can quantify the results. You have partnered with cross-functional leaders to plan and support the delivery of projects or programs through the entire lifecycle. You have experience coaching and mentoring senior-level agile practitioners. Your agile toolkit includes deep knowledge about Scrum and Kanban, but isn’t limited to those. You know when to execute, when to collaborate, and when to delegate. You should be comfortable diving in proactively to solve high-impact problems. This is especially true for problems in which you can take administrative work off of Engineering teams’ plates. When you are out of your depth, you are able to identify the right people to bring in to help move forward. While we don’t expect you to be able to solve every problem yourself, we do expect you to own the outcome and pursue alternative solves, such as collaborating with internal subject matter experts, identifying and lobbying for an external training program, or even advocating for a new hire, for example. You believe relationships are critical to success. You are able to quickly build relationships and trust with folks across Engineering, Product, and Design. This might be due to your previous experience working with cross-functional teams, your technical know-how, or your natural curiosity and empathy for folks in these roles. You need to be able to help teams — even those that don’t report to you — deliver their best work and accomplish their goals by influencing through ideas, facts, and data. You are data minded. You know that modern EPD teams think in terms of data, and you speak that language fluently, allowing you to build credibility and influence decision-making. While you might not be deep in the weeds of SQL, you’re familiar with BI and Analytics tools (we primarily use Looker) and you know how to self-serve a decent amount of data. You’re an excellent written communicator. We’re a 100% remote team, and writing is our primary means of communication at Zapier, so this bullet appears in most jobs. It’s even more critical here. In addition to department- and company-wide communications, this role will be responsible for creating operations-related documentation and governing Engineering-related Playbooks. Writing easily consumable communications and documents will be a key way that you will influence and maintain change in the globally distributed EPD org. You’re solid at time management and effective prioritization. You’ll juggle a variety of projects, and as a part of a distributed team, you’ll be trusted to work with minimal supervision. You’re keen to build processes that’ll make your job more efficient over time. Things You’ll Do By definition, this role will have varying responsibilities. This is a list of some responsibilities addressing org needs that have come up recently. You might do some or all of these types of things, but this is not a comprehensive list (and you may not do all of them). Work with Product Ops to manage a light yet effective quarterly and annual planning process, gaining input and buy-in during the process from everyone from Engineering leadership to IC engineers Own and improve Engineering practices that support our teams and people, including but not limited to Agile practices, hiring, onboarding, and career growth, in collaboration with key partners in the org Identify crucial operational metrics to measure team effectiveness and help us implement instrumentation and tactics to improve those metrics Build a well-oiled decision-making process in Engineering, with a focus on speeding up decision-making and ensuring decisions are visible to needed parties Develop and implement a career growth architecture for the agile practitioners on your team Redesign Engineering-wide communication practices with an eye towards mutual exclusivity and collective exhaustion Partner with Product Ops and Design Ops to surface operational and org-level improvements we could make to better execute on large, multi-team projects Help the company make decisions around tools, e.g. identify when have we outgrown a particular tool, or whether we should consolidate competing tools around the company   The Whole Package Location: UTC-5 – UTC-8 Our flexible, distributed environment lets us work with the best people from around the world. Zapiens live in 40+ countries, including the United Kingdom, Thailand, India, Nigeria, Taiwan, Guatemala, New Zealand, Australia, and more! Zapier offers: Competitive salary Healthcare + dental + vision coverage* Retirement plan with 4% company match* Profit-sharing program for 100% of Zapiens $2,000 annual learning stipend for use on courses, conferences, and more—your choice Two annual all-company retreats 14 weeks paid leave for new parents of biological or adopted children Customized Zapiversary rewards on your 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 year work anniversaries Leading-edge equipment. We set you up with an Apple laptop and provide an additional budget for you to choose other home office accessories and software you may need. Time to renew. We encourage Zapiens to take at least 2 weeks off each year. Most of us take 4-5 weeks, in addition to locally recognized holidays. Opportunity to work with Zapier’s amazing partners network *While we take care of Zapiens around the world the best we can, healthcare and retirement plans are currently available specifically in the UK, Canada, and United States. How to Apply We have a non-standard application process designed to promote inclusion and equity. We first ask a few questions in our application form that would typically be asked at the start of an initial interview. This helps speed up the process and lets us get to know you a bit better right out of the gate. Please be sure to answer each question; the resume and CV fields are optional. After you apply, you are going to hear back from us—even if we don’t see an immediate fit with our team. In fact, throughout the process, we strive to make sure you never go more than seven days without hearing from us. Zapier is an equal opportunity employer. We’re excited to work with talented and empathetic people, and do not discriminate based on race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, age, or any other status protected by local law. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base. Zapier is committed to inclusion. As part of this commitment, Zapier will ensure that people with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodations are needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact jobs@zapier.com.