Job Description

Description
Position at Choreograph
Title: VP Engineering, Activation
WHO WE ARE
Choreograph is WPP's global data products and technology company. We're on a mission to transform marketing by building the fastest, most connected data platform that bridges marketing strategy to scaled activation.
We work with agencies and clients to transform the value of data by bringing together technology, data and analytics capabilities. We deliver this through the Open Media Studio, an AI-enabled media and data platform for the next era of advertising.
We're endlessly curious. Our team of thinkers, builders, creators and problem solvers are over 1,000 strong, across 20 markets around the world.
WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
This position is a hands-on engineering leadership role. Internally, the role is accountable for the successful technical delivery of many products within the Activation product area, entailing hands-on architecture and guidance for the implementation of our data platforms. Externally, the role is the engineering face of Activation, entailing senior stakeholder relationship management, product positioning and customer adoption. The role demands a balance of: deep technical expertise, senior leadership, knowledge of the Advertising industry, and preferably, a knowledge of, and relationships within, the GroupM network.
WHAT YOU WILL DO

• You will oversee, and be accountable for, the technical implementation of our Activation products, ensuring that our end-to-end architecture both scales and evolves in line with the use cases they support.
• You will work very closely with the VP Product for the Activation product area to ensure our systems are fit for purpose through a nuanced understanding of the business context and the factors that drive the product life cycle.
• You will co-define (with the VP Product) the objectives and key results within the Activation product area and ensure that all staff in this product area are aligned to these objectives.
• You will work closely with the VP Engineering & VP Product leads across the other product areas in the business to ensure cohesion (through application topology awareness) between our systems and that our collective delivery delivers against Choreograph's business objectives.
• You will provide guidance, rooted in experience, for engineering best practice across our product areas.
• You will occasionally provide designs and solutions for critical projects that allow the development teams to deliver software on time and to agreed functional and non-functional specifications.
• You will regularly provide technical leadership in order to make sure that the designs are implemented using appropriate tools and techniques.
• You will influence the management of technical debt across projects; making the right calls between balancing pragmatic delivery and compromising implementation patterns.
• You will help guard our central SRE practice and ensure adoption within the Activation product area.
• You will drive innovation; coaching engineers to experiment and choose appropriate technologies to fit into our ecosystem - this requires you to be an expert authority on data architecture & engineering tools, techniques and patterns.
• You will stay on top of data cloud costs accrued in our projects and prioritise optimisations when costs exceed expectations.
• You will be the senior contact/escalation point for engineering people issues in the Activation product area, including defining roles, hiring and working with operational leads to effectively onboard new team members.
• You will engage with RFI processes during new customer engagements, provide a technical steer, high level estimations and produce design documents.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED
You have a proven track record of:

• Overseeing complex technical delivery of software and big data platforms.
• Liaising with senior stakeholders - both internally and externally.
• Building, developing and leading a large team of engineers - ideally including offshore & onshore resources.
• Operating in the software development stack (Python, Django, microservices)
• Designing and managing successful delivery of cloud native applications at scale.
• Managing the SDLC for large scale projects.

SKILLS
YOU ARE

• An experienced leader.
• A highly experienced software architect.
• Proficient in one of our core programming languages (Python, Java).
• Working knowledge of GCP based Big Data
• Highly experienced in the development workflow.
• Highly detail oriented.
• Focused on delivery.

YOU KNOW

• Modern software architecture.
• Operational tooling surrounding the software development lifecycle IaC, CI/CS.
• Microservice architecture patterns (modern data platforms stretch beyond data engineering).
• API implementation patterns and interfaces.
• How the advertising works and are familiar with the typical datasets.
• How machine learning works at a high level.

NICE TO HAVE

• Have used GCP extensively.
• Have experience within the GroupM and/or WPP network and have established relationships.
• Have domain knowledge of online advertising

If you are ready to be at the forefront of the AdTech industry, shaping its future, and driving success for both Choreograph and our clients, we encourage you to apply and join our team.
Choreograph is the beating heart of data inside WPP's media investment group, GroupM, the world's leading media investment company responsible for more than $60 billion in annual media investment. Discover more about Choreograph at
GroupM and all its affiliates embrace and celebrate diversity, inclusivity, and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We are a worldwide media agency network that represents global clients. The more inclusive we are, the more great work we can create together
(Please note this is a UK based role and requires individuals to have the right to work in this location)
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