The Role

As an Engineering Manager, you’ll join our quickly growing Technology organization, spanning engineering and data science, reporting to the Director of Technology, and be responsible for attracting great people, helping your software engineers grow and develop, your teams continuously improve and ship great code, and the company identify and prioritize the right work, all coming together to make the lives of real teachers, students, and principals better.

We believe that people do great things when inspired, aligned with the right goals, and given adequate support and resources. We are a growth-oriented team that values an excitement to learn, a readiness to work together collaboratively, perseverance in the face of challenges, and a drive to bring about positive change in the world. As such, we believe that engineering management is fundamentally about people, and managers with a working knowledge of web technology, a passion for enabling healthy, high-performing teams, and previous professional experience managing software engineers are encouraged to apply. 

Responsibilities

• Attract, grow and serve a team of software engineers through hiring, coaching, mentoring, and career development
• Work closely with one or more cross-functional “squads” to facilitate team cohesion and performance
• Contribute to our shared vision of eSpark’s future across business, product, and technology, and help translate it into company goals, quarterly OKRs, and projects
• Collaborate with other technology leaders to identify, develop, and execute on strategic initiatives in support of our product and company goals
• Give leadership to other efforts that fit your passion and eSpark’s needs in collaboration with other teammates

Benefits and Policies. In addition to a competitive salary and stock options, eSpark offers full healthcare coverage (including vision, dental, and mental health benefits), generous vacation and parental leave policies. We are a fully-distributed company (circa March 2020) and provide benefits around outfitting your home-office arrangement, including your choice of technical equipment. We believe in work-life balance and respect nights and weekends.

The Interviews

The eSpark Technology team’s approach to interviewing is built on transparency, as we believe that everyone has a better, more productive experience when expectations are clear. For this role, we are looking for candidates who meet four specific criteria:

• Able to scale the Technology team with great, new people. 
• Skilled in the cultivation of teams and teammates. 
• Great coach who can lead squads toward high(er)-performance. 
• Skilled strategist who can help us scale the technology organization.

To learn about your capabilities in these four areas –and you in a general sense– we conduct four interviews with various teammates from eSpark, from the Technology team and beyond. For this position, we also conduct a number of “reference interviews,” to complete a full picture of you as a candidate. Written feedback or evaluations are also acceptable substitutes. That said, we also recognize that not everyone enjoys a full history of healthy working environments, and we are keen to work with you to identify appropriate individuals who can speak to your strengths, areas for growth, and what helps you succeed.

Why eSpark

Our vision is that every student, regardless of their circumstances or background, has the opportunity to set and realize an ambitious dream for themselves. Our mission is to re-imagine learning so it's student centered, enabling students to succeed in school and life.

In the last school year, more than 1M students used eSpark, many of them for the first time. Our customer satisfaction (measured by net promoter score) has grown steadily and is now 79.  We’re on track to triple our new bookings this year, and have steadily increased our annual revenue year-on-year.

Impact.  Our work makes a significant difference in students' lives. Independent testing data from public school districts across the country consistently show that students learn more in areas of personalized study with eSpark. One researcher from MIT, who evaluated an eSpark in Boston Public Schools, wrote:  “I find strong positive, significant effects of eSpark for both math and English Language Arts (ELA).  So the eSpark intervention, which is just 30 minutes a day, led to almost half the effect of a full year in a high performing charter school.  I view these as very impressive gains.  The findings made a substantial dent into the black-white achievement gap.” 

Diversity. At eSpark, we believe all people—adults and students alike—deserve respect for who they are. We work hard to make eSpark an environment in which everyone can thrive and succeed, supporting employees as individuals through people-centric management and as a company with our IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) employee resource group. We believe it is critical that our team reflects the student populations we aim to serve.

Pandemic. The 2020-20201 school year has been a time of unprecedented challenges for teachers, students, parents, and schools. 

We believe — and have seen in last spring and fall — that eSpark’s personalized curriculum, made of fun and educational games and videos and adapted to each student; our commitment to providing teachers the tools and live support they need to support both remote and in-person learning; and our engaged team focused together on supporting educators and learners, can be a powerful help to teachers and to the students most at risk of falling behind during the pandemic.