VP of Engineering

You may know us as Gengo, and you may know we were recently acquired by Lionbridge. Our name may be different, but our passion to create, culture of diversity, and technology-first mindset remain intact. In fact, these are just a few of the reasons we chose to join forces — Lionbridge will give us an even larger platform to share the original Gengo ethos. With the support of our new parent, we are also doubling-down on our focus to bring value to the AI ecosystem.

About the role

The VP of Engineering for Gengo, a Lionbridge company, will be about nurturing and guiding a team of talented engineers to produce their best work. The role will be part of the senior leadership team, and will involve being a key decision maker in the tools, technologies, and processes used to deliver best-in-class software built for an accelerating ecosystem — Artificial Intelligence. The VP of Engineering will have responsibilities not for the faint of heart — pretty much every team will be a stakeholder (did we mention “technology-first”?), meaning patience and effective communication both inward and outward are paramount. Success will reveal a motivated and productive engineering team, and a public eager to learn from them!

What you’ll do

Lead a team of engineers in both Tokyo and Manila, who are writing code from top to bottom and deploying the scalable infrastructure that supports it. Your partner in crime will be the Product Manager, coordinating the delegation of development to the right individuals and meeting launch deadlines. As a leader, you will inspire them with stories of valour and success — whether your own or perhaps from a local celebrity. Each individual will have a clear understanding of their career path and potential to grow, a get-it-done innovative mindset, and a penchant for just making things better — lead by you.

About the team

We’re a Tokyo-based team, originally founded to help large and small online services Go Global with human translation through our API. We’ve since launched new services that bring AI training data to the expanding AI ecosystem. We love working with internationally-minded people, and most of our team have lived in another country before; a few even speak more than 3 languages (not including code!). Half of the team is stationed in Tokyo, and the other half in Manila — but our wormhole makes it seem like we’re all just “next door”.

Key responsibilities

• Pull your weight as part of the senior leadership team
• Assist engineers in formulating and reviewing technical specs for new features
• Manage engineers’ career paths through 1:1s, performance reviews, and the like
• Lead implementations of new technologies and software development practices, and ensure a productive development environment using time-tested development processes
• Manage the delivery of effective, quality code bases and QA processes
• Communicate team development and manage expectations with engineering stakeholders

Required skills

• Excellent communication in English, problem-solving, and organizational skills
• Proven ability to nurture and manage a team of engineers through challenging cycles, from technical to interpersonal
• Able to code in more than one programming language
• Clear understanding of software design patterns and good practices
• Knowledge of agile software development processes, such as Extreme Programming or Scrum

Bonus skills

• Knowledge of queue-based asynchronous programming
• Knowledge of kubernetes and docker
• Experience scaling and managing databases and effectively debugging system-load and throughput bottlenecks
• Experience in managing a financial budget