Head of Engineering

About HousingAnywhere

HousingAnywhere is Europe’s largest mid-term rental platform. With Kamernet and Studapart under its umbrella, it represents three fast-growing brands with over 30 million yearly unique visitors combined, 160,000+ properties available for rent and 100,000+ tenants securing their new homes, based on the 2022 performance. HousingAnywhere serves young professionals and students, primarily aged between 18 and 35, connecting them withaccommodation providers. Through its advanced technology platform, tenants rent accommodation for 3 to 12 months outside of their country of origin. Headquartered in Rotterdam, HousingAnywhere operates in most European cities and recently expanded to key cities in the US, establishing a presence in over 125 cities. Driven by the mission to enable people to live wherever and however they choose, thanks to a flexible renting experience, the technology scale-up employs 340 professionals globally.

Our Mission :

Rent Easy, Live Free.

We are empowering people to live wherever and however they choose. To find comfort and peace of mind on the other side of the world or the other side of town. All while feeling confident and totally at ease, whatever their adventure might involve. We are doing it by creating a new standard of renting. Safe. Harmonious. More options. Less hassle. With the help of our trusted networks of landlords and partners.

Our Values

• Ownership
• We are Enablers
• We are Changemakers
• We are Connectors

Your Impact

As a Head of Engineering you will be joining our Marketplace team, inside the Product Development division. HousingAnywhere Marketplace is our main product. In the past year, we published +52,000 listings and helped +21,000 people find a new home through our Marketplace.

Our rapid growth has brought new challenges. We are transforming into a Rental Platform and building new product lines, such as HousingAnywhere Payments, and our Marketplace product will need to evolve to integrate with it. You will be accountable for the Marketplace team, and leading the future development of the product, together with your team and the Product Manager. You will ensure the quality and scalability of the services that power the product.As a senior member of our team, you will be expected to embrace and contribute to our technical vision and practises, and grow your team through mentoring and coaching. You will be an ambassador of our culture and a role model for your team, and you will ensure that our culture is nurtured within your team.

Our stack ️

Our services are mostly built with the following stack.

• Go
• PostgreSQL database(s)
• GCP
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• gRPC 
• NSQ
• React
• TypeScript
• Git/Github
• NodeJS
• Jenkins
• Cypress  

Our practises:

• Domain-Driven Design
• DevOps
• Continuous Delivery
• Code reviews
• Monorepos

The role of the Head of Engineering Marketplace team

We expect the Head of engineering to be technical, with a technical background. However, we don’t expect the Head of engineering  to do heavy hands-on work, but rather set the right technical direction.  Expect an effort of 40% spent in people management, 40% spent in management of projects and design solutions, 20% coding and/or helping others through pair programming or code reviews.

The role can be described in four pillars.

Delivery

• Set your team for success to deliver on the roadmap effectively and in time.
• Ensure projects assigned to them are correctly scoped, planned and delivered in time through delegation.
• Identify bottlenecks, and create and evolve processes to make your team effective, and successful.
• Ensure work delivered by your team is up to our engineering standards, and guide less senior team members to unblock themselves when struggling.
• Work with other teams on cross-team projects and initiatives.
• Ensure operational excellence of the services and systems managed by your team. Ensure your team is equipped to handle and resolve outages effectively.
• Talk to stakeholders and proactively keep them informed about the status and impediments of projects.
• Unblock your team through effective decision making and leadership on difficult technical challenges.

Direction

• Collaborate on setting priorities and roadmap with Product Managers.
• Set ambitious and achievable quarterly goals for your team in line with product development goals and strategy.
• Instil a sense of urgency to your team towards company goals, and ensure work is aligned with goals.
• Help your team focus on impact and outcome through good prioritisation and planning.
• Collaborate with other managers to align on management practises and guidelines and help evolve them.
• Resolve conflicts and differences of opinion and help the people involved align and move forward towards the common goals.
• Provide technical direction in projects for the team and unblock projects by making decisions when needed.

Talent

• Nurture the talents in your team and help your reports grow their career in HousingAnywhere by providing direction, mentorship and coaching.
• Manage performance review, and handle high performers and low performers effectively.
• Provide timely and actionable feedback to your team members to help them grow in their roles.
• Create growth opportunities through growing ownership and sponsorship for your team members.
• Spot needs and hiring new talents make your team more effective at achieving their goals.

Culture

• Embody our company culture and lead by example.
• Create a culture of ownership, empowerment and autonomy in which everyone is a leader.
• Create moments for team members to bond with each other and with people of other teams.
• Establish a growth mindset culture where people are safe to make mistakes and learn from them.
• Create an inclusive and diverse environment in which different perspectives are considered and valued.
• Look out for problems and unhealthy aspects of our culture and influence key people to propose improvements.

Who we look for

The ideal candidate for this position typically has around 10 years of development experience focused on building complex systems at scale.

• You find energy in helping people grow and be effective in their jobs. You understand the concept of being a multiplier.Your role is less about hands-on development and more about enabling, managing, and delegating.
• You remain hands-on when necessary, especially during code reviews and making technical decisions.
• You have a keen interest in new technologies and continuously seek to improve yourself and others.
• You stay current with industry developments and openly share your knowledge with colleagues and the tech community.
• You can lead teams working across the stack, from frontend (React/Typescript) to backend (Go/Postgres).

What's in it for you?

• Diverse international community (46+ nationalities).
• Hybrid working policy.
• Unlimited paid holidays, minimum-based not maximum.
• 1,000 EUR personal development budget.
• Complete coverage for commuting.
• Personal equipment, including laptop and ergonomic setup.
• Gym membership discount with GoVital or OneFit.
• Variable pension scheme.
• Dutch/English classes budget.
• Fun team-building and after-work drinks every Friday.
• Competitive compensation including equity package.

If you have further questions, please email  y.kaboorappan@housinganywhere.com

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