Software Engineering Manager
San Francisco, CA
Engineering & Design /
Full-Time /
On-site
Video editing is the final frontier of software tools moving to the cloud. We're making the next generation of modern creators tools to enable everyone to share their story online. Join us at Kapwing on our mission to make content creation fast, accessible, and collaborative.
Everyone is a creator. The problem, however, is that today's tools get in the way of expressing our creativity fully. Especially when it comes to video, the gap between an idea and a video is wide enough that it's hard to even start.
Our mission at Kapwing is to make content creation easier and more accessible. Our main product, Kapwing Studio, is an online video editor that is both powerful and easy to use. Millions of creators every month choose Kapwing to tell their story and bring their ideas to life.
Our vision is to build a modern video editing platform that serves as the go-to tool for anyone creating video for Youtube, social media, or work. Being in the browser allows us to turn video editing, a traditionally heavyweight, time consuming workflow, into a joyful, collaborative, and fully-featured experience. We believe that we can use technology to augment the video editing and content creation experience, and we've already started on this path with a wide array of templates, applications of artificial intelligence, and new pipelines for exporting and video processing.
While software is the core of our product, being creative is the core of our work. Every team at Kapwing, from engineering to content to customer success, values trying new things, moving quickly, and helping creators in new ways. Join us on our journey to democratize creative tools and invent the future stack of video creation.
Role Definition
We are looking for a Technical Engineering Manager to lead our Studio team. This team is responsible for Kapwing's Repurpose Studio engine, helping marketing teams to turn long-form video into shareable video highlights. This manager will have four direct reports and will partner with engineers, PMs and QA to launch new features.
Engineering Managers at Kapwing provide technical leadership to major projects and manage a team of engineers. You manage your project goals, contribute to product strategy and develop your team. EMs will meet regularly with the engineers on your team in order to gather feedback from them on topics ranging from project progress, internal processes, career development, mentoring, and general satisfaction. You will actively contribute to technical projects as well.
Responsibilities
- Defines achievable and impactful OKRs and staffing goals. Ensures that the tasks laid out in sprints are inline with quarterly objectives.
- Manages 4 software engineers at varying levels of seniority. Takes an active role in growing headcount, coaching employees, and developing technical talent.
- Owns engineering culture on their team. Cares personally, encourages collaboration, and communicates actively.
- Works to prevent knowledge silos. Ensures a healthy level of delegation from senior to junior engineers, even when this may come at the expense of schedule.
- Triages bugs, oversees releases, and enforces a high quality bar on new releases. Advocates for technical investments and best practices
- Partners with Product Managers to define, build, and launch full-stack features (React, Node, Python) for one of the world's most popular cloud-based video editors.
- Manages long pole exploratory projects: defines success quantitatively, ensures that work is structured, involves product and design at the right time.
- Strong cross-functional communicator. Conveys technical complexity to non technical staff. Collaborates across functions.
- Evangelizes new technologies, including LLMs and generative models. Consistently prototypes to see what is possible.
Requirements
- 2+ years of experience managing software engineering teams with 4+ people. Familiar with sprint processes, technical mentorship, and performance management.
- 6+ years of production-level full-stack engineering in a modern web stack. Comfortable with React, Typescript, Node, automated testing (i.e. Cypress, Jest), MongoDB, and REST APIs
- Experience at a high-tech company that we recognize and trust. Vision for world-class engineering culture.
- Strategic and analytical. Comfortable with scripting, data instrumentation, and feature prioritization. Relates engineering work to business impact.
- Strong communication skills. Collaborates with product, support, QA, other engineering teams on planning, release monitoring, and critical debug.
- Work two days a week from downtown San Francisco office
- Authorized to work in the USA without visa sponsorship
Preferred
- Experience or comfort with leading hybrid teams
- Experience with AI applications, like transcription or GPT4
- Familiar with frontend release management for a twice-weekly release candence
- Entrepreneurial: Experience with startups, ideally as a founder or executive
$160,000 - $220,000 a year
Kapwing is a hybrid company with about 35 FTE. Most Kapwingers are based in the Bay Area and work Tuesday and Thursday from the HQ near Civic Center in San Francisco. We also have a smaller in-person team based in NYC. Our ideal candidate will join and develop our in-person community here in the Bay Area.
Benefits
Health Insurance
We have competitive health benefits for medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Equipment
Laptop
On their first day, every Kapwinger gets a Macbook Pro 16” work laptop. Monitor, standing desks, mouse, and keyboard are available in the office.
Time Off
Kapwing has a flexible PTO policy. We want all employees to continue to grow to the best of their abilities, but we also know the importance of work/life balance and supporting a family. Generally, we recommend that employees take no less than two weeks off every year, but PTO is personal and discretionary.
Hybrid
Kapwingers have a hybrid schedule. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our in-office days. Employees can choose to work from home or work from the office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We ask our employees to be available 10:30 - 4pm their local time to have good overlap with time zones.
Apart from that, Kapwingers manage their own hours and can flexibly design their own schedules around their team, home life and preferences.
401k
Kapwing sponsors 401k accounts for all of our employees through Guideline.
Food
When in the office, Kapwing covers lunch everyday. Occasionally, for company events, we send employees credit through a delivery platform to eat as a team. Employees can expense dinner if they are working from the office through dinner.
Team Weeks
We have Bi-annual team weeks when all team members come to SF for team building, training, and co-working. We balance work time with fun offsite activities to help grow our community and foster relationships cross functionally.
