VP Technology - Motor Trend

Full Time Job
The Role
The VP of Technology role will be responsible for the overall architecture, understanding and aligning with global technology platform for Discovery and leading the development teams to build best-of-breed MotorTrend digital properties including MotorTrend.com, MotorTrend TV Apps, MotorTrend mobile apps as well as a suite of websites all around motor-centric content.

Core to the role is understanding the broader landscape of media technologies, defining the technical roadmap of our products. This person will also be responsible for operational aspects of the systems and own operational metrics around all production systems by monitoring KPI’s for all of the internal systems and external partners such as CDNs that impact MTG customers.

This person will also work with the global technology platform teams to create architectures that will enable streamline development and deployment of all client applications (web and mobile) and leverage a unified content management system and video delivery platform.
This position will be responsible for hiring and developing the organization in addition to leading any technology vendors.

Responsibilities

1. Lead the technology vision for MTG
2. Participate in the full lifecycle of product development and operations including the scoping, development, integration, testing, infrastructure used and ongoing operational maintenance.
3. Recruit, mentor and lead the core MTG technology team.
4. Establish the process for best engineering hygiene such as architectural guidelines, code and design re-use, operational excellence and cloud strategy
5. Understand external technology dependencies such as CDNs, ad-serving technologies, content syndication and leverage them as-needed to create best-of-breed customer products for MTG
6. Engage closely with Discovery Digital Technology team to create the MTG technical strategy
7. Manage budgets for product development
8. Manage external technology vendors
9. Keep abreast of technical developments of operational importance to MTG and to participate in developing or setting standards
10. To build effective relationships with other technical teams within MTG and across Discovery

Requirements

* A deep knowledge of distributed architectures and cloud technologies such as AWS
* Deep understanding of web application development
* A deep understanding operational/DevOps processes and ability to dive deep on operational issues
* Understanding of OTT and DRM technology
* Experience delivering streaming technologies B2C, including encoding, server technologies, client and server playlists/metafiles, customer media player creation, adaptive streaming technologies, DASH, HLS
* Experience in a software engineering discipline, including knowledge of methodologies as well as experience of using SCM tools such as source control, issue tracking and automated build systems
* Experience with both front-end client technologies such as HTML5, React and Node.js
* Experience with backend technologies such as REST, GraphQL, AWS technologies and data pipelines
* Strong understanding of security, privacy and compliance aspects of software architecture
* Experience with product delivery using agile methodologies such as Scrum
* Able to demonstrate strong management skills including communication, negotiation and facilitation
* Well-developed analytical and investigative skills, including experience of translating business and feature requirements into technical specifications and evaluating new or emerging technologies services
* Experience of communicating complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders

* Must have the legal right to work in the United States

Preferred Qualifications

* Knowledge of web & mobile ad-serving/ad-targeting and analytics solutions. (e.g. Adobe analytics, server-side ad insertion)
* Knowledge of VOD, IPTV, MPEG, Encoding and Streaming
* Knowledge of user experience design
* Wide set of skills in terms of modern web development frameworks, both serverside and clientside.
* Non-biased and neutral in terms of technology choices. Always choose the best solution, based on the requirements short term and long term, (and also based on legacy and pragmatism of course)
* Be able to think and plan long term, not being too stressed by the next MVP
* Experience leading and managing a multi-disciplinary team

Los Angeles, California, LA, CA