VP, Engineering

Description

Immigration / Work Authorization Notice: Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States. iSpot is not able to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this position at this time.

iSpot competes for the best talent. Our compensation packages consist of salary and equity in one of Seattle’s hottest start-ups, as well as other standard benefits. Most importantly, we provide a really interesting working experience, and the chance to contribute to the success of something great.

What You’ll Be Part Of:

At iSpot, we are transforming how brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms measure advertising outcomes across linear, streaming, and digital ecosystems. Engineering is the engine behind that transformation — the systems that ingest, resolve, and measure billions of ad exposures every day.

As Vice President of Engineering, you will own the execution, technical direction, and organizational health of engineering across iSpot's Creative, Audience, and Outcomes (CAO) product portfolio. Your mission is to build an engineering organization that ships predictably, operates reliably at scale, and turns product strategy into shipped, measurable customer value.

This is a highly cross-functional leadership role that sits at the intersection of engineering, product, data science, and operations. You will partner closely with Product Management, Data Science, Platform, and Go-to-Market teams to set roadmaps, resolve dependencies, and deliver on commitments across a complex, data-intensive measurement platform.

This is a hands-on leadership role. While you will build and lead multiple engineering teams through managers and senior individual contributors, we expect our leaders to review architectures, dig into incidents, read code, evaluate emerging technologies, and work directly with teams to unblock delivery.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end engineering execution for the Creative, Audience, and Outcomes product lines — delivery, quality, reliability, and cost.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering organization, including hiring, leveling, performance management, and succession planning for managers and senior engineers.
• Partner with Product Management to translate strategy into achievable roadmaps, realistic commitments, and clear delivery milestones.
• Set technical direction and architectural standards for scalable, secure, and maintainable systems across data pipelines, services, and customer-facing applications.
• Drive operational excellence: uptime, incident response, on-call health, observability, data quality, and continuous reduction of technical debt.
• Establish and improve the engineering operating model — planning cadence, SDLC practices, code review standards, testing strategy, and release management.
• Champion AI-assisted engineering practices to raise developer throughput and quality across the organization.
• Partner with Data Science to productionize methodology, models, and measurement logic at scale.
• Manage engineering budget, vendor relationships, cloud spend, and capacity planning against business priorities.
• Ensure security, privacy, data governance, and compliance requirements are embedded in how the organization builds and operates.
• Define and report the metrics that matter — delivery predictability, defect and incident rates, platform performance, unit economics, and team engagement.
• Represent engineering with executives, customers, and partners, communicating trade-offs and progress with clarity and credibility.
• Define and execute iSpot’s AI product strategy across the Creative, Audience, and Outcomes (CAO) product portfolio.
• Identify high-value opportunities to apply generative AI, agentic systems, machine learning, and advanced analytics to deliver differentiated customer experiences and measurable business outcomes.
• Lead the incubation, prototyping, and commercialization of AI-powered products and features across creative intelligence, audience measurement, and outcome attribution solutions.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to embed AI capabilities into existing products and future roadmaps.
• Establish technical direction and architectural patterns for scalable, secure, and responsible AI systems.
• Build and lead a high-performing team of AI engineers, scientists, and product specialists focused on customer-facing innovation.
• Drive experimentation frameworks that enable rapid validation of new AI concepts while maintaining strong execution discipline.
• Collaborate directly with customers, partners, and commercial teams to understand market needs and translate them into differentiated AI capabilities.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies, vendors, and platforms to accelerate time-to-market and maximize business impact.
• Ensure responsible AI practices, governance, security, privacy, and compliance considerations are embedded into all customer-facing solutions.
• Define success metrics and business outcomes for AI initiatives, including customer adoption, revenue impact, operational efficiency, and product differentiation.
• Represent iSpot externally as a thought leader on AI innovation within advertising, media measurement, audience intelligence, and marketing technology.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field; advanced degree preferred.
• 15+ years of technology experience, including 5+ years leading engineering organizations through managers.
• Proven track record of shipping and operating large-scale, data-intensive SaaS products in production.
• Depth in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and modern data platforms and pipelines.
• Experience leading cross-functional delivery spanning engineering, product management, and data science.
• Strong technical depth with the ability and willingness to remain hands-on when necessary.
• Demonstrated success building engineering culture, raising the talent bar, and retaining strong teams.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to translate complex technical trade-offs into clear business outcomes.
• Demonstrated success operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments and driving organizational change.
• Strong understanding of enterprise security, privacy, and data governance.
• Preferred Skills:
• Experience within advertising technology, media measurement, marketing technology, or consumer insights platforms.
• Experience with large-scale data processing and analytics platforms (streaming ingestion, warehousing, identity resolution).
• Experience integrating AI and agentic capabilities into both products and the software development lifecycle.
• Familiarity with modern DevOps, SRE, and MLOps practices in cloud-native environments.
• Experience leading platform migrations, replatforming efforts, or post-acquisition technical integration.
• MS or advanced technical degree preferred.
• Additional Notes:
• This role is focused on the execution engine behind iSpot's product portfolio — the people, systems, and practices that turn strategy into shipped, reliable, and measurable capabilities.
• Success in this role will be measured by delivery predictability, platform reliability and scale, engineering quality, and the strength and retention of the organization.
• We are looking for a builder and operator who combines organizational leadership with genuine technical depth and a bias for execution. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable presenting a delivery plan to executives and reviewing an architecture with engineers.
• What You’ll Be Part Of:
• At iSpot, we are transforming how brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms measure advertising outcomes across linear, streaming, and digital ecosystems. Artificial Intelligence is a critical part of our product strategy and future growth.
• As Vice President of AI, you will lead the development and execution of AI-powered capabilities across iSpot’s customer-facing product portfolio, with responsibility spanning our Creative, Audience, and Outcomes (CAO) product lines. Your mission is to identify, build, and scale innovative AI solutions that create measurable business value, accelerate product differentiation, and unlock new revenue opportunities.
• This is a highly cross-functional leadership role that sits at the intersection of technology, product, data science, and commercial strategy. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product Management, Data Science, and Go-to-Market teams to bring AI-driven experiences to market—from intelligent creative analysis and audience insights to next-generation outcome measurement, automation, and agentic workflows.
• This is a hands-on leadership role. While you will build and lead a high-performing AI organization, we expect our leaders to actively prototype, experiment, review architectures , evaluate emerging technologies, and work directly with teams to turn ideas into customer value.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science , Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field; advanced degree preferred.
• 15+ years of technology leadership experience, including significant experience building AI, machine learning, or data-driven products.
• Proven track record of delivering customer-facing AI products that have created measurable business impact.
• Deep understanding of modern AI technologies, including large language models, agentic systems, retrieval architectures, machine learning platforms, and generative AI applications.
• Experience leading cross-functional organizations spanning engineering, product management, and data science.
• Strong technical depth with the ability and willingness to remain hands-on when necessary.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes.
• Demonstrated success operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments and driving organizational change.
• Strong understanding of responsible AI principles, data governance, privacy, and enterprise security.
• Preferred Skills:
• Experience within advertising technology, media measurement, marketing technology, or consumer insights platforms.
• Experience building and deploying agentic AI systems and autonomous workflows in production environments.
• Familiarity with modern MLOps practices and cloud-native AI platforms.
• Track record of creating new products or revenue streams through AI-enabled capabilities.
• Experience working directly with enterprise customers to shape product strategy and innovation priorities.
• MS or advanced technical degree preferred.
• Additional Notes:
• This role is focused on accelerating iSpot’s customer-facing AI innovation agenda and delivering differentiated capabilities across our Creative, Audience, and Outcomes product portfolio.
• Success in this role will be measured by the ability to translate emerging AI technologies into meaningful customer value, strengthen our competitive position, and drive measurable business outcomes.
• We are looking for a builder, operator, and hands-on technical leader who combines strategic vision with a bias for execution, experimentation, and rapid learning. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable discussing long-term AI strategy with executives and working alongside engineers to bring innovative ideas to life.
• Target cash compensation range: $226,300 - $296,450 USD Annually
• We are committed to providing competitive, market-informed compensation. The cash compensation above includes base salary, variable commission for employees in eligible roles, and annual bonus targets for eligible roles. In addition to cash compensation, all full time iSpotters are eligible to participate in iSpot’s equity plan to receive stock options. Non-exempt roles will also be eligible for (pre-approved) overtime pay. Individual compensation packages are influenced by different factors unique to each candidate, including their skills, experience, qualifications and other job-related reasons.
• For more information on total rewards package, go HERE
• Hybrid & Flexible Workplace Policy
• iSpot supports a hybrid and flexible workplace. Depending on location and work responsibilities, employees may be designated as full-time or part-time office-based or a fully remote employee. A hybrid work schedule indicates that you work in the office some days and work from home other days. The best hybrid workplaces allow for flexibility while also encouraging consistency.
• Those local or living in surrounding areas to one of our offices (Bellevue, WA or New York, NY) will work a hybrid schedule, coming into their local office 1-3 days a week. While those in a role, not office-based and located further away from our offices, will work a fully remote schedule. If you have questions regarding exact details of our hybrid & flexible workplace policy, please let your recruiter know and they will discuss with you further.
• LI-Hybrid
• If you don't feel you met every single requirement for the role, don't rule yourself out. Please apply anyway!
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