VP, Engineering

The Block is building an array of information services for the digital assets industry. Since our founding in 2018, The Block has helped millions of users and thousands of organizations understand the disruptive nature of digital assets.

Through The Block's website + newsletter, The Block Research, our podcast "The Scoop," hosted + 3rd party events and community participation, we interact daily with tens of thousands of technologists, financial market participants,

Fortune 500 professionals, global service providers, policymakers and more. The Block delivers deep insight into how this emerging sector interacts with traditional finance, technology, governments, and markets. The Block’s foundation is simple: we are the first and final word in digital assets.
Our VP of Engineering will lead the technology team for the world's most trusted crypto media property and help forge the path beyond just news into a true digital assets information services business.

There’s not a better time to join The Block. We are looking for an entrepreneurial engineering leader to serve as our VP of Engineering. As we continue to improve the state of digital assets research, journalism, and information services, you will help scale our Engineering organization and technical infrastructure to ensure that The Block’s digital properties are performant and are globally available 24-hours day to our millions of users and members.

In this role, you will be responsible for both driving the strategy and leading the execution of scaling our Engineering organization. You will partner with our CTO to provide strategic technical guidance, invest in developing our existing team, and help attract and retain top talent. You will lead by example, applying your significant technology and organization-building skills to help our Engineering team unblock and execute at an extremely high level. As The Block’s engineering team is still growing, you will be expected to get hands on to deliver on technology tasks that can be quickly handled.
The ideal candidate has experience scaling an engineering organization within a fast-growing startup. You care about applying technical best practices at scale as well as building a diverse and inclusive engineering culture. We look for teammates who are proactive, curious, humble, resourceful, and will challenge us at every turn.
This role reports to the CTO.

You’re the right person for this role if you are:

• A technology leader: hold yourself and others accountable for systems uptime, on-time feature delivery, and maintenance of a comprehensive technical roadmap.
• A technologist at heart—who can review code or discuss system architecture—and are passionate about scaling engineering teams and processes
• An experienced manager of managers with the ability to mentor and develop engineering managers and directors
• Excited to build products that empower all of the teams at The Block: editorial, sales, marketing, the most impactful teams and individuals, as well as our team of content creators, all of who depend on The Block on a day to day basis for all of their information needs
• A proven leader who can serve as a strategic thought partner to leaders across functions including product, sales, journalism, research, and leadership
• A clear communicator who can provide non-technical explanations for highly technical projectsA best-in-class recruiter with a profile and track record of sourcing and vetting strong engineering talent
• Passionate about building high-functioning, collaborative, and diverse engineering teams
• A data-driven thinker who resists inertia by constantly looking to optimize and improve existing processes
• A creative and versatile problem solver. You thrive in fast-paced, constantly changing environments by creating structure and process where there is none

Some things you will work on:

• Partner with our CTO to scale our engineering team from 4 to 10 engineers
• Guide teams to improve and consistently deliver software across our Platform and Business Unit teams
• Evangelize the technology strategy throughout the engineering org and the broader company
• Develop processes and protocols that ensure the team can make sustainable technical and architectural decisions with minimal bottlenecks
• Our technology stack and services include: Wordpress, AWS ELB, ECS, Fargate, Redis for ElastiCache, S3, AuroraDb, Github, Github Actions, Cloudflare Workers, PHP, Python, Vue.js, Nuxt.js, Zapier, Stripe, Datadog.

You should have:

• Proven track record of success in designing and building diverse, scalable engineering teams, ideally with experience at a fast-growing startup7+ years of combined engineering experience, ideally starting as an individual contributor, then transitioning to senior management roles
• Proven ability to successfully execute against an ambitious vision in partnership with other Leadership and functions across the company
• Experience fostering an inclusive and innovative engineering environmen
• Highly proficient technical knowledge of engineering best practices at scale
• Ability to champion, lead, and mentor a team
• Passion for digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technology
• Understanding of cutting edge financial data and information products

About

The Block is the leading research, analysis and news brand in the digital asset space. Founded in 2018 and based in NYC, The Block's team is spread across 7 times zones, covering the global cryptocurrency and blockchain space 24/7. Through The Block's website + newsletter, The Block research, our podcast "The Scoop," hosted + 3rd party events and community participation, we interact daily with tens of thousands of technologists, financial market participants, Fortune 500 professionals, global service providers, policymakers and more. The Block delivers deep insight into how this emerging sector interacts with traditional finance, technology, governments, and markets. The Block’s foundation is simple: we are the first and final word in digital assets.