Engineering Manager, Mobile Applications

Since Kickstarter’s founding in 2009, we have been committed to our mission: Help bring creative projects to life. Kickstarter is the destination crowdfunding platform for creatives across film, games, and music to art, design, and technology. As of November 2023, people have pledged more than US$7.6 billion dollars to creative projects on Kickstarter and we've helped more than 249,000 projects reach their funding goal.

Our mission is fueled by the support of our team. At Kickstarter, we believe our workplace is a community. We are rooted in our shared values, supporting our team members as whole people, and giving our team the autonomy and space to participate in decisions that impact them.

We're seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to join our Mobile Applications team.

The salary for this role in the United States is $185,000 - $205,000.

The salary for this role in Canada is CAD$144,000 - $168,000.

Please note that for this Engineering Manager, Mobile Applications role, we are only considering candidates based in the specific U.S. states and Canadian provinces we support. You can find the list of available U.S. and Canadian locations at the bottom of this job posting.

About the Team

Kickstarter’s product development team builds the platform that helps bring creative projects to life.

We're a cross-functional team of engineers, designers, data analysts, and community specialists working collaboratively using iterative, data-driven, and outcome oriented approaches to solve problems.

Our work touches every area of the platform as we develop new features and functionality. Our ability to develop valuable, maintainable and useful solutions opens up more opportunities for creators and backers to bring creative projects to life.

We build features on modern mobile applications built in Swift, Objective C, Java, and Kotlin all backed by a GraphQL API. We use iterative and data-driven processes to build and refine our platform that supports our mission of bringing creative projects to life.

In this role, you will:

• Supervise iOS and Android engineers and provide people management support (including coaching, career development, and performance management). Engineering managers at Kickstarter are full-time people managers and do not ship code changes.
• Work with partner Product Managers and Product Designers to plan, communicate, and execute mobile application strategies and technical system roadmaps that advance Kickstarter's company goals.
• Work with the head of engineering and peer Engineering Managers to proactively identify opportunities to develop and recommend department-wide process and culture, and then individually ensure the department-wide success of those improvements.
• Effectively coach and provide growth feedback to other managers on the engineering team where appropriate.
• Ensure all direct reports understand and can effectively act on company- and team-level strategies.
• Proactively identify and resolve communication, organization or execution problems, often using persuasion or wielding indirect authority to do so.
• Clearly and effectively communicate about team opportunities, challenges, needs, and accomplishments upward and outward in the organization.
• Remain informed of mobile ecosystem changes and App Store/Play Store guidance as well as mechanisms necessary to ship mobile applications to these app stores.
• Build, lead, and develop team members; work with them to define their career development plans, setting specific goals, monitoring and providing feedback on performance, and motivating them to achieve results as part of their growth.
• Lead inclusively and foster a safe environment.
• Engage in people management related tasks in support of Kickstarter's policies and processes.

About You

• You have at least 2+ years of prior experience developing and managing iOS and/or Android engineers, maintaining a high bar for performance across the organization.
• You have hands-on experience with iOS and/or Android release processes.
• You have the ability to interpret company- and organization-level goals and map them to well-defined, team- or mobile-specific execution plans.
• You have the ability to write correct, well-tested software for supervisory purposes.
• You have the knowledge of, or willingness to learn, core Kickstarter mobile and backend technologies (Swift, Kotlin, Ruby on Rails, MySQL) for supervisory purposes.
• Prior professional experience as an iOS or Android engineer is highly preferred.

What You'll Enjoy

• A fully remote workforce with plenty of opportunities to get to know your colleagues
• 100% employer-paid health plan offerings
• 16 paid vacation days, 10 sick days, and a company-wide winter break between Christmas and New Years
• 25 volunteer hours each year to give back to your community
• 16 weeks of parental leave plus fertility/family planning resources
• Kickstarter currently operates with a 4-day workweek, a model that aligns our belief in a healthy work-life balance and gives staff the space to be more than their work
• Incredibly talented and inspiring colleagues who know how to blend their creative endeavors into their work

You can read more about our benefits and working at Kickstarter at our Jobs page: https://jobs.kickstarter.com/

Our Fully Virtual Team

We’re currently able to support employees based in the following US locations: CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, MA, MD, NC, NJ, NY, OR, VA, and WA. We're also able to support employees in the United Kingdom and Canada (Ontario & British Columbia). If you live in—or are willing to move to—any of these locations, we look forward to your application! If there is a required or preferred location for an open role, it will be listed in the job description.

Kickstarter is an equal opportunity employer. As part of our commitment to fight for equality, we work to ensure a fair and consistent interview process. We celebrate diversity and we are committed to an inclusive work environment.

Reminder to applicants: Authentic communications from Kickstarter will always originate from official Kickstarter email domains (@kickstarter.com). Exercise caution and verify the legitimacy of anyone who claims to be representing Kickstarter on other platforms.

Please reach out to Kickstarter’s Help Center to report potentially fraudulent contact here: https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/requests/new