About Toptal
Toptal is a global network of top freelance talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and over 40% year-over-year growth, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote company.
We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.
Position Description
As a leader of the Client Portal team, you will be leading work on the Client Portal app which allows our clients to interact with us. You’ll work with several different A/B experiments to improve our client’s interactions and satisfaction, by improving upon existing features or building new ones. A few examples of such would be a permission system, reporting and dashboards, management of our service offerings, changes to informational architecture and UX, and many others.
The Client Portal team is a product development unit. The team has some of the best Backend, Frontend, and Quality Assurance Engineers in a very stable team environment and great culture. You can expect collaboration and involvement of the team members but you’ll be responsible to shape how the team evolves under your supervision; what processes the team adopts and drops; and participate in the hiring process if needed. On the product side, you will be supported by the creative visions and careful planning of a seasoned Product Manager and Product Designer.
On the technical side at Client Portal, you’ll have several opportunities to be more involved in modernizing its frontend stack, which has been built in react a few years ago but can be improved in different ways, one such example being migrating to TypeScript. You’ll also be able to help improve performance and architecture on the backend and set the team’s technical roadmap.
This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere. Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.
Responsibilities:
You will be leading a team of highly skilled professionals to create and maintain world-class products used by our users externally and internally. Among other responsibilities:
- Set goals for your team and team members using the OKRs framework.
- Understand the big picture of what your team is doing and why.
- Inspire and motivate your team.
- Communicate with stakeholders regularly and proactively.
- Communicate proactively with your team and the Product Manager.
- Create a productive and enjoyable work environment for the team.
- Own process of ticket creation and ticket quality, as well as effective grooming and planning, all the way to delivery.
- Establish feedback loops and give your team members immediate feedback.
- Lead the recruiting and hiring process of the team.
- Participate in regular performance reviews.
- Facilitate, and when necessary resolve technical and interpersonal discussions.
- Ensure the overall output quality of the team and frequently engage in code reviews.
- Mentor team members and collaborate with them on personal and career growth.
- Bring up difficult and/or systemic challenges and impediments to the attention of your manager.
- Actively discuss strategic topics with peers and Directors to help shape engineering’s environment at Toptal
In the first week, expect to:
- Start at the team by being introduced to Toptal and its culture, meeting colleagues, and get access to documentation and repositories.
In the first month, expect to:
- Complete onboarding, understand the team’s immediate roadmap and become acquainted with your team and processes.
In the first three months, expect to:
- Ship impactful initiatives that significantly changes the way in which clients interact with us
- Be working with your team and understand its mission and domain.
- Conduct regular 1:1s with your teammates, and begin to understand their strengths and aspirations.
- Be leading your team’s efforts from planning to delivery.
In the first six months, expect to:
- Have set and followed through at least one full quarter of OKRs.
- Build a deep understanding of the mission, constraints, and capabilities of your team and squad.
- Develop relationships with engineers, team leads, and other colleagues to maximise cross-collaboration whenever beneficial.
- Contribute improvement suggestions at an Engineering-wide and even Company-wide level.
In the first year, expect to:
- Have led the shipping of at least one major feature in your team having company-wide impact.
- Organize at least one team gathering.
- Have defined yearly OKRs with and for your team.
Requirements:
- Be first and foremost a leader, not a developer. However, you stay up to date with programming-related topics and work shoulder-to-shoulder with your team when required.
- Have 5+ years of web development experience.
- Have previous experience leading a product engineering team.
- Have a solid understanding of development and quality assurance methodologies and concepts. Have a track record of delivering successful products as an engineer and as an engineering manager.
- Have experience guiding the continuous improvement of process and technology.
- Thrive on providing and receiving honest but always constructive feedback.
- You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will lead by example and not simply be here just to tell other people what to do.
