VP, Engineering - dbt Labs

Since 2016, dbt Labs has been on a mission to help analysts create and disseminate organizational knowledge. dbt Labs pioneered the practice of analytics engineering, built the primary tool in the analytics engineering toolbox, and has been fortunate enough to see a fantastic community coalesce to help push the boundaries of the analytics engineering workflow. Today there are 30,000 companies using dbt every week, 100,000 dbt Community members, and over 4,100 dbt Cloud customers. 

dbt Labs is a mission-driven company. We were founded with the goal of unlocking the value of transformation for analytics engineers. We’ve been successful at becoming the standard in data transformation. Now, we’re expanding to power the entire Analytics Development Life Cycle. And we’re growing. To power that growth, we’re looking for a VP of Engineering to join us and lead the teams that will be building and scaling dbt into the future.

In this role, you will manage and develop all of our engineering teams, oversee execution, and build an organization dedicated to delighting data practitioners and data analysts. You will work on projects at every stage of the pipeline, improving our quality and reliability from discovery through operations. You can expect to work with autonomy, advocate for best-in-class practices, and collaborate with teams across dbt Labs. This is a pivotal year for us, and you will have the opportunity to create exciting new customer experiences for all data practitioners. You’ll build a great engineering team, partner across our Tech org with Product, Design, and Developer Experience. You’ll also be the face of Engineering to the rest of the company, building relationships, taking feedback, and delivering high quality products to our customers.

Responsibilities

Leadership and Management

• Report directly to the CTO.

• Manage all of our engineering leaders who have broad responsibilities across multiple products and technologies, including operations, developer productivity, shared services, data engines, cross platform, and applications.

• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

• Build and develop the organization through technical guidance, coaching, mentoring, hiring, and rolling up your sleeves when you find gaps. You’ll be technically deep and learn about and adjudicate technical decisions throughout the org.

• Champion our values and mission. We have equitable recruiting practices, a diverse team, and a healthy environment where people have a sense of belonging and the support they need to succeed. Were looking for a leader who shares those goals and has experience in actualizing them.

Strategic Planning

• Create a technical roadmap for a company; align the mission and vision of the business with the technical framework to achieve those goals, cooperating with the Product and Design teams to put it all together.

• Identify, recommend, and implement new technologies and systems to improve organizational processes and decision-making.

• Ensure technical excellence across the entire organization, including architecture, tech debt management, tooling, quality, reliability, and overall velocity.

• Understand our engineering processes and strike a balance between efficiency and quality to provide the best outcomes for a business, as well as building developer practices and tooling for a high-morale and effective engineering team.

Collaboration

• Collaborate with the executive team and senior engineering leadership to define and achieve key engineering and business metrics and objectives.

• Build strong relationships with peers in product management and customer facing teams in our go to market (GTM) organization.

• Effectively communicate the technical vision and progress to stakeholders around the company.

Qualifications

• Experience as a Senior Director, VP, or other executive of Engineering in a B2B SaaS company

• Experience in the Analytics ecosystem is a major plus: building tools with data practitioners as your end users, supporting the analytics development life cycle.

• Experience managing multiple engineering managers and directors; groups of 100+ engineers and coordinating delivery of projects across multiple teams.

• Demonstrated ability to work across a team of engineering managers and directors in a collaborative fashion to share resources and collectively drive quality and operational excellence.

• Background and deep interest in technology. You lead and bond with all the engineers on your team and also have the technical depth to gain the respect of and lead our most senior engineers.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Traits we are looking for:

• Desire to work with our GTM teams and product management to understand how our products are delighting and disappointing customers.

• Eagerness to get into details, and the experience to know when your managers should solve problems independently.

• Consistent demonstration of using data to test assumptions and drive decision making processes.

• You optimize for long-term value, with a pragmatic point of view on bringing near-term solutions when business goals require.

• You have experience supporting the growth and learning of your teams.

• You thrive in fast-paced and rapidly changing startup environments.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $313,000-$379,000

• Equity Stake

• Benefits - dbt Labs offers:

o Unlimited vacation (and yes we use it!)

o 401k w/3% guaranteed contribution

o Excellent healthcare

o Paid Parental Leave

o Wellness stipend

o Home office stipend, and more!

What to expect in the hiring process (all video interviews via Zoom unless accommodations are needed):

• Interview with a Talent Acquisition Partner

• Interview with the CTO

• Team Interviews (1:1s) with team members and other stakeholders

• Technical panel presentation on a topic of your choice

• A values interview with the CEO

Who we are

At dbt Labs, we have developed strong opinions on how companies should practice analytics.

Specifically, we believe that:

• Code-based transformations offer unmatched flexibility and transparency across various “multi-player” development to power everyone in the organization to collaborate on a common language

• Data analysts should adopt similar practices and tools to software developers

• Critical analytics infrastructure should be controlled by its users as open source software

• Analytic code itself — not just analytics tools — will increasingly be open source