VP, Engineering

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision and multi-year roadmap for Skillz's platform, aligning engineering investments with business strategy and product priorities.
• Own the full engineering organization - product engineering, platform, infrastructure, and data - driving reliability, velocity, and quality across all disciplines.
• Hire, retain, coach, and develop engineers and engineering managers at every level; build a culture of accountability, high performance, and continuous growth.
• Collaborate with Product Management, Finance, Data Science, and executive leadership; track delivery milestones, proactively surface risks to upper management, and develop mitigation plans to protect critical outcomes.
• Drive architectural decisions and champion engineering best practices including CI/CD, observability, incident response, and security-by-design to ensure the platform scales with the business.
• Interface cross-functionally to prioritize features and functionality based on available resources and business impact, serving as the primary engineering voice in executive-level planning.

Key Competencies

• Executive communication - translates technical complexity for C-suite and board audiences; manages stakeholder expectations proactively and with clarity.
• People leadership - develops managers and engineers with intention, builds high-trust teams, and creates psychologically safe environments where people do their best work.
• Tech credibility - hands-on in system design and code review; earns respect from engineers at all levels and makes sound architectural judgment calls.
• Risk management - identifies delivery risks early, develops concrete mitigation plans, and keeps cross-functional partners aligned through ambiguity.
• Operational discipline - sets and enforces standards for on-call, incident response, and platform reliability; owns SLAs/SLOs with a continuous improvement mindset.

Experience

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years managing managers at a VP or Senior Director level in a high-growth technology company.
• Gaming industry experience is required; active gaming engagement is a strong plus.
• Hands-on background in system design, distributed systems, and mobile backend architecture; experience with real-time systems, payment infrastructure, or fraud/trust systems is a plus.
• Proven track record of building and scaling engineering organizations at a consumer-facing platform.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent industry experience; experience at a publicly traded or late-stage venture-backed company preferred.

Total Starting Compensation including Base + Bonus + Equity

$350,000

Location

Hybrid in San Francisco, California

Travel Requirement

Less than 10%