WHO WE ARE

Kapow, now a Cvent company, is an industry-leading event platform that allows companies to find, book and manage memorable, scalable and essential corporate events. We help companies grow revenue quickly by combining 10,000+ unique, pre-packaged experiences, national partnerships with restaurants, retailers and other special event venues, and the service and expertise of local event experts. Kapow empowers customers to drive stakeholder collaboration, boost attendance, fill pipeline, measure success and produce bottom-line results from their event programs. Based in Chicago, we operate all over the U.S. and in select international markets.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Kapow is driving an exciting transformation of how companies find, book and execute some of their most important face-to-face interactions with key clients and this role is responsible for the critical technology platform and team that makes this possible.

The Senior Manager/Manager at Kapow is a leadership role in the organization and will be responsible for all technology aspects of building, maintaining and growing the Kapow platform. The team is responsible for engineering and architecture of the multiple applications powering supply acquisition and management, website experience, marketing tools, transaction management and data infrastructure. 

The prerequisites for joining our development team are simple: we care more about your attitude and aptitude than the specific tools and technologies you have used in the past. You need to have a strong passion for software development and must take pride in your results. You should also have great analytical skills and ability to handle complex, modular software development in a collaborative team-based environment.

For the role, you must have experience with and value managing, leading and mentoring engineers and delivering successful products to market. We are looking for hires who know how to help a team succeed.

This role is accountable for all aspects of the sprint feature team in terms of staffing, development, quality and operations. You will have an established track record of developing complex distributed software systems, delivering high quality applications with an exceptional User Experience, a keen technical curiosity, excellent management and communication skills, and be driven to achieve results in a fast paced, dynamic environment.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

• For the role, you must have experience with and value managing, leading, hiring and mentoring engineers and delivering successful products to market.
• Be a key partner in rolling out regular feature releases and keeping our product ahead of the competition.
• Manage greenfield development, legacy software management and integration with multiple other legacy systems.
• Roll up your sleeves and assist the teams in solving challenging technical issues while shipping code regularly by working closely on new features with Developers, Architects, UX, Product Managers and QA in an Agile environment.
• Help improve the process and output of the sprint team, working with the team to find ways to improve outcomes and deliver value.
• Establish a working knowledge of the current Kapow product features and differentiators that your team will be building upon every day. Leverage this understanding and your ability to "get into the weeds" when discussing potential opportunities with your team and stakeholders.
• Own and refine team KPIs, leverage site monitoring and optimization capabilities to ensure that we are always focused on end-user experience.
• Act as a catalyst to drive your staff's career development by providing actionable feedback, coaching and identifying opportunities within and outside of your team. 
• Maintain a career development framework for software engineers on your team and assist individuals with navigating their career path.
• Maintain and optimize development tools, environment and best practices within your team and ensure they are followed to assure quality and long-term health of the services your team owns.
• Provide technical guidance and thought leadership to engineers.
• Be an evangelist in the company for data-informed thinking and decision making.

YOUR CREDS

Required Skills/Qualifications:

• Ideal candidate should possess 7+ years experience in a mid to high volume B2C or B2B eCommerce environment. Minimum of 4 years in a technology management capacity with direct leadership responsibilities.
• While experience in the event or hospitality industry is not necessary, ideal candidates will come from industries in which high-availability of systems is paramount to business operations and customer experience is central to success.
• Experience with Ruby/Ruby on Rails a strong plus.
• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Information Systems or related field preferred.
• Extensive technical experience in the following areas: application development, infrastructure engineering, integration and support.
• Strong working knowledge of software development technologies in an agile environment. 
• Demonstrated ability to recruit and lead a technical team, including performance management and career path definition.
• Self-motivated, able to deal with ambiguity, and works well under pressure to meet deadlines within short time constraints
• Prior experience building and managing services in AWS or similar high-performance cloud environments.