Engineering Manager

About bol

Bol is the largest online retailer in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Position

How do you make our customers happy?

Bol.com is changing retail to make daily life simpler for 12 million customers. Together with 47,000 partners who do business on our retail tech platform, we offer 34 million articles and achieve peak sales of 700 orders per minute (Black Friday 2020). Fueled by a pioneering spirit and a customer-centric approach, we make shopping and selling easier each day. Want to contribute to that ambition? Happy to have you on board!

The biggest challenge

As we grow as an organization, so do the role and impact of our tech solutions. In order to accelerate our IT development and maximize the business impact of these solution, our scrum teams evolved into product innovation teams. Our ‘traditional’ team managers became Engineering Managers, who assume full technical ownership of product successes and developer growth. How do you inspire a team of engineers to deliver robust and future-ready tech solutions? What do they need to rise to the coding challenge, so ambitions are fulfilled better and/or sooner? As Engineering Manager, you set the stage for an amazing engineering experience!

Your responsibilities

As Engineering Manager you are a driver of ‘engineering happiness’ and growth. Both on a personal and professional level. You ensure the team always has access to the right tools to take the next step. And the one after that. It’s up to you to position innovation teams for success by cultivating a culture of autonomy, entrepreneurship, craftsmanship and continuous improvement. High-performing teams deliver high-performing code! You align teams with business goals by making sure strategies are realistic and carefully weigh all team and business input. For example, regarding quality, reliability and future fitness. You coach a total of 12-18 engineers who work on projects that have a quantifiable impact on the internal and external customer experience.

You are the (sustainable!) oil in the product engine: you guarantee that product goals can be reached by scalable IT solutions. Your enthusiasm and clear vision help us attain operational excellence. What is the ideal team composition? What new competencies and tooling do we need to realize development ambitions? How should we roll out projects to maximize business value? And what opportunities do new technologies and/or methodologies present? You streamline the technological building blocks while keeping all of your project plates spinning. Even after a new service goes live, you don’t grab a latte and kick up your feet, because we adhere to the ‘you build it, you run it, you love it’ principle. If there’s a hitch, the business will not hesitate to ask for a prompt solution. As for the setting and team topics, those depend on your ‘landing stage’.

• You join the leadership team and work closely with the Product Manager and the People Lead: together, you co-create a setting that empowers engineers to the fullest
• You nurture a welcoming, safe, and inspiring work environment that stimulates engineers to shine and grow, both professionally and personally
• You drive effective software development processes that embody and enable the product’s goals, in a way that is scalable, robust, performant, maintainable and fit for future change
• You sign off on an adequate escalation strategy regarding tech issues and concerns
• You help innovation teams grasp product trends and take ownership over product success
• You develop, evangelize, and own the technical (product) strategy, and (in tandem with the Product Manager and People Lead) translate that vision into team goals, processes, and tactics

3 reasons why this is (not) for you 

• Yes, if you have a >2 year track record in developing IT developers
• Yes, if you've earned your development stripes and know your bits from your bytes
• Yes, if you strongly believe that product innovation teams trump 'traditional' scrum setups
• No, if you often feel that business stakeholders come from Mars and should probably stay there
• No, if you race to the finish line until you see a problem, and then dive for cover
• No, if you instinctively redirect feedback, questions and criticism to /dev/null

Additional details

Where you’ll work

At the premier online retail tech platform in the Netherlands and Belgium. A platform where 12 million customers can choose from over 34 million articles. A platform that helps roughly 47,000 commercial partners run their businesses. And a platform that will never be ‘finished’, because bol.com has been reinventing retail since 1999 and we always will be. If there’s a better way to do something, we’re working on it! Together with our customers, partners, and over 2,500 colleagues.