Who we are
Skyscanner
is a leading global travel search site and app, a place where people are
inspired to plan and book directly from millions of travel options at
the best prices. We employ over 900+ people across ten offices globally,
and after reaching market leader status, we were acquired
by Chinese online travel company Ctrip in a deal valued at £1.4bn.
While we remain operationally independent, our acquisition by Ctrip
allows us to take the business to the next level of accelerated global
growth. It’s a hugely exciting time for Skyscanner and the over 70m
people who use us every month. We are unbiased and free, and our secret
is in our unique proprietary technology that connects people directly to
everything the travel industry has to offer.
We’re seeking a technical hands-on engineering lead to join us in our
Barcelona office and be part of our highly distributed global team. We
have a mantra for scaling and as such this role will specifically focus
on leading a squad in redesigning 3rd party solutions.
If you enjoy a hybrid role of technical leadership where you can
utilise your experience to directly impact the growth and development of
your engineering reports, alongside having influence across the wider
Skyscanner business, this could be the place for you.
Skyscanner operates in a Tribes and Squads model and we have created an engineering culture where there is a high level of trust, autonomy and transparency. Our engineers
work in autonomous teams (squads), they create their own backlog, they
ship code whenever they want and don’t have dependencies in order to
deliver to their users. Our engine uses global scale services, big data
and machine learning to capture, normalise and make sense of real-time
information from our thousands of partners.
Key Responsibilities:
- Leadership of a 50+ person distributed organisation
- Set technology standards and direct the execution of initiatives from inception through execution
- Provide transformational leadership working cross-functionally
across Skyscanner. Work with the broader Engineering/Product
organisation to drive common platforms and new and innovative services
- Lead technology innovation. He/She will be a critical member of the
Engineering leadership team and will be expected to drive new thinking
around how our technology can continue to scale, globalise and simplify
- Process optimization and discipline. Ensure the Tribe/Squads are
operating at maximum efficiency without distracting from the ability to
innovate and grow
- Planning and strategy. Provide leadership on strategic planning for
the teams and the ability to forward plan in partnership with other
teams across Skyscanner
- Execution at pace. Understand the resources available, the plan and the execution model
- Build deep relationships with Product Management and other partners
and collaborate on plans to improve Enablement’s products and services
- Focus on continually evolving enablement/development, pushing business impacting development/functionality to market quicker
- Recruiting and retaining the best talent whilst strengthening cohesion and collaboration across the teams
Ideal Experience:
- Multiple years’ technology management experience in an ecommerce
and/or software development environment using Agile methodologies
- Demonstrable track record of leading a 50+ member technology team
- Strong leadership skills in attracting, retaining, and developing
top tech talent and proven ability to successfully scale a growing team
- Experience with customer-focused/centric organisations – proven
credentials in building products that partners and end-users need, want
and will adopt
- Experience as a member of the senior management/executive team
- Demonstrated success defining and delivering against product roadmaps
- Complex project management skills, with agile experience strongly desired
- Proven strong business background and strong analytical skills
- Experience working in a geographically distributed environment strongly desired
- Deep technical expertise in online transactional technologies with
an emphasis on Java, Big Data, Cloud and related technical ecosystems
- Experience with complex SOA based architectures in highly available, scalable, distributed, web based, ecommerce applications
- Relevant academic engineering experience preferred
Why Us?
We are proud to have a working environment that sets our employees up for success, as well as all the usual perks you would expect
from barista machines to massage chairs, to free food, holiday buying
scheme as well as frequent townhalls with our CEO. What we really aim
for is a place where people can thrive, be trusted to make an impact and
ultimately help us put our users first.
Our office in Barcelona is situated in the heart of the city in Plaça Catalunya.
Skyscanner can offer you large-scale, complex problems where you can
reach 70 million users whilst enjoying a high level of autonomy and
influence and a flexible working environment where you can thrive.
Join us now.
For more details on Engineering at Skyscanner you can check our Engineering Blog and follow Skyscanner Engineering on Twitter