Director of Engineering, SoundCloud
Recommendations
+ Employee Stock Ownership Plan
More information about location
Next-generation music entertainment ecosystem
Be an early applicant
Next-generation music entertainment ecosystem
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
+ Employee Stock Ownership Plan
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To empower the world's audio creators with the best tools, services and resources to build and grow their careers.
Role
Who you are
- We care much more about your general engineering and ML skills and positive attitude towards getting things done than any prior knowledge of a particular language or framework
- Experience with managing engineers and scientists
- A strong engineering and data science background, knowledge and experience on recommendation engine and machine learning systems, being able to evaluate complex technical decisions
- Industry experience building data-driven products and implementing machine-learning solutions at scale
- Experience in maintaining large cloud systems over time, establishing a technical roadmap and balancing product and engineering concerns
- Extensive experience with and in-depth knowledge of agile methodologies
- Demonstrated expertise in problem solving and technical innovation
- Recruiting and culturally-informed communication skills
- If you are excited by the opportunity to directly impact the daily experience and happiness of millions of people around the world, giving them the power to share and connect through music, we’d love to hear from you
What the job involves
- As a director of the Recommendation teams, you will drive technical strategy and execution of projects to help music fans find great music and help creators to find the best possible audience for their music
- You will work closely with Product Managers and UX Researchers to develop experiences helping our customers to find great music in our ever-growing catalog of ~300 million tracks
- You will be responsible for development of key services such as personalized home feed ranking, personalized playlists generation, related music recommendations and artist stations as well as ideation and delivery of new services and capabilities
- In your role you will have end-to-end ownership of the software engineering and machine learning infrastructure necessary to leverage the data and other resources in order to build and deliver search and recommendation mechanisms
- You will prioritize activities, delegate and supervise all engineers’ activities and deliverables
- As a people manager you will be responsible for hiring, managing and developing a group of talented software engineers working with cutting-edge technologies such as microservices, Scala, TypeScript/React, Python, data processing platforms such as BigQuery and other Cloud Platform services
- You will also grow and work with the team of machine learning engineers and scientists working with variety of ML frameworks including (but not limited to) PyTorch and Tensorflow
- Work closely with the Product Managers, UX Researchers and Designers to transform Discovery at SoundCloud
- Broadcast the Discovery vision to inspire technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Drive short and long-term objectives and key results with full responsibility for executing the OKRs. Be a pragmatic voice showing where to invest engineering effort to drive business outcomes
- Lead, support and mentor Engineers and Scientists
- Recruit and retain top-notch talents for your teams
- Act as a technical liaison to and representative for other teams, groups, and the entire company
- Keep in touch with industry trends and advances in technology and highlight opportunities that are applicable to SoundCloud
Our take
Founded in 2007, SoundCloud saw the need for an artist-first platform. They set out to empower independent artists and equip them with the necessary tools and resources to build and grow their careers.
SoundCloud has over 40 million artists on the platform (in comparison to Spotify's 11 million), making them the biggest audio discovery platform in a large and growing market. According to Midia Research, the independent artist market is bound to see unhindered revenue growth for the next few years.
The company plans to scale up its audience and expand its services through new offerings such as the SoundCloud "roster". This is a tier system that provides significant creative and financial resources, as well as financial and marketing support to artists (essentially rivaling large-scale record companies). While artists will maintain ownership of their copyrights they are to be represented by SoundCloud.
SoundCloud's expansion into new markets and regions is still full steam ahead. Through acquisitions, partnerships and even better product offerings, SoundCloud is bent on cementing its standing as every creator's springboard.
Kirsty
Company Specialist
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Feb 2020
$75m
SERIES G
Aug 2017
$170m
SERIES F
Total funding: $463.7m
Company benefits
- Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as mental health resources
- Employee Stock Ownership Plan
- Generous professional development allowance
- Interested in a gym membership, photography course or book? We have a Creativity and Wellness benefit!
- Flexible vacation and public holiday policy where you can take up to 35 days of PTO annually
- 16 paid weeks for all parents (birthing and non-birthing), regardless of gender, to welcome newborns, adopted and foster children
- Various snacks, goodies, and 2 free lunches weekly when at the office
Company HQ
Mitte, Berlin, BE
Articles
Leadership
Alexander Ljung
(Chairman)Served as CEO of SoundCloud for 10 years, becoming Chairman in 2017. Has gone onto co-found Dance.
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