Director of Engineering
Old Well Labs (OWL), a financial technology startup based in Charlotte, NC, is looking for a Director of Engineering to help lead the development of our suite of products. While OWL was founded in 2015, it only recently spun out of Old Well Partners, a global, $400+mm hedge fund. Accordingly, this individual will join the founding team, including one technical, full-stack, co-founder, to help make meaningful decisions contributing to OWL’s commercialization and scalable future growth.
Overview:
The Director of Engineering will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining a full-stack application (Python + JavaScript), and will have significant influence on technical architecture and product strategy. This unique opportunity awards the successful candidate a driver’s seat to further define and scale a sophisticated and well-used product.
Given this individual’s mission-critical role in shaping the Company’s commercialization, we expect this person should bring material, relevant experience and strong opinions on both back-end and front-end technology stacks, including hosting and web infrastructure. The successful candidate will be a member of the senior leadership team and employee #3 at a post-product, rapidly commercializing company with significant upside from their initial equity grant.
As the Company grows, you will be an important stakeholder helping to shape OWL’s evolution and build what we’re committed to delivering – the best global financial services software for LPs and GPs alike.
Your day-to-day:
• Full-scope technical ownership of the OWL product, working closely with our technical co-founder
• Oversee all back-end and front-end development, hosting and dev-ops frameworks to ensure uptime of the application
• Collaborate closely with other developers and the management team to ensure timely delivery of new products and features
• Write awesome code. We’re a small team today, so we expect that everyone is “hands on”. As such, an advanced understanding of Python and JavaScript (including major front-end frameworks) is required
• Have a deep understanding of the business domain, ensuring that the software aligns with the company’s goals and objectives
• Stay up to date with the latest technologies and industry trends to drive innovation
• Be a trusted leader with respect to team management, up-skilling and hiring within the engineering team
Illustrative Current Major Projects:
• Create a versatile REST API that not only serves as the backbone of our application’s frontend, but also has the potential to be a powerful tool for commercial use
• Develop a return engine that merges user data with the OWL dataset
• Design and implement a dynamic monthly digest that provides insightful analysis that enhances the user’s experience with the application and drives engagement
• Implement and utilize powerful internal tracking tools, like Segment, to optimize our software development process and ensure our team is always working on the most important tasks
• We would expect the successful candidate to immediately jump in to co-own the development of these, and other, projects
The Ideal Candidate Will Have the Following:
• Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science or equivalent
• 6+ years of engineering experience
• 3+ years in a position where you contributed towards meaningful decisions around the direction that technical solutions should take, preferably as a team/tech lead
• A deep understanding of database design and modeling
• A history of designing and implementing scalable and maintainable software solutions, with a strong focus on object-oriented programming and design principles
• Advanced level of proficiency with Python and associated web frameworks
• Familiarity with hosting services such as AWS, GCP and/or Azure
• Prior experience in financial technology, investment technology and/or data science
• A deep interest in practical solutions to technical problems. You understand and enjoy learning about different design patterns and how they can elegantly solve problems
• A deep interest in a wide range of technologies. We work with Python, SQL, poetry, DevOps tooling, Docker, AWS, and web development (HTML/CSS/JS/Bootstrap/etc.)
• Ability to collaborate with cross-functional team members to build a market-leading product that drives business growth
• Strong communication, team management and collaboration skills to effectively work with and up-skill cross-functional teams and stakeholders
The package:
As a full-time employee of OWL, you’ll have access to competitive compensation – including a meaningful equity stake in the Company (subject to a standard vesting schedule), health/dental/vision benefits, and flexible time off.
Candidates located in North Carolina or South Carolina are strongly preferred, however remote is available for the right candidate. If you join us in person in our Charlotte location, we have a centrally located office stocked with snacks, coffee, and just about every other beverage you can imagine.
How We Hire
All applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, gender identity, or any other discriminatory factors. Please note that we do not provide immigration sponsorship for this role. All offers are subject to a background check.
We are not accepting applications via recruiters at this time.
