VP Engineering in Amsterdam, Nederland

Catawiki is Europe’s largest curated platform for buying & selling special objects in the most easy & reliable manner. Our mission is to connect passionate enthusiasts across the globe with special objects that have interesting stories behind them. We are a marketplace that operates across 29 categories grouped under 4 business verticals : Collectables, Art & Antiques, Luxury & Mobility. 

Every object is hand-picked by our 200+ in-house experts before being approved for an auction. Our promise to the buyers : ‘Just find the object you love, and we’ll take care of the rest’. A piece of the moon, a complete dinosaur skeleton, the Pope's hat and the world's smallest book are just some of the extraordinary objects that have found their way onto Catawiki, among the 11 Million+ that we have auctioned so far. 

Started in The Netherlands in 2008, we have grown rapidly since introducing the auction model on our site in 2011.  In 2020, we are on a €450 M GMV run rate, growing at 25-30% yoy with healthy EBITDA margins.  We are well on track to reach our goal of becoming a Billion GMV business in Europe in the next 3-4 years. An expansion into Asia and N. America is part of the plan as well.
 

We’re looking for a Vice President of Engineering to help build Catawiki, an e-commerce site for special, collectable objects used by millions of people across Europe.

As the leader of the Catawiki engineering team, you’ll be responsible for driving our efforts toward ensuring we have efficient, flexible, and cost-effective technical platforms.  As a manager of managers, you will use your experience and technical acumen to lead a set of teams, totalling around 70 engineers (and growing!). 

This role reports into the CPTO and is an integral part of the company’s leadership team. The other key stakeholders are the other CXOs/VPs and the board of the company.

• Guide and mentor the managers of your teams.
• Provide leadership and direction for our technical platform choices.
• Coordinate company-wide engineering transitions to improved platforms.

All in a work environment where people from all backgrounds can thrive and grow. Your impact will help millions of people buy and sell the objects of their dreams. Based in our Amsterdam office, you’ll report to the CPTO.

• ~10 million users per month;
• ~11 engineering teams;
• ~40 microservices [ruby on rails, golang];
• ~600 VMs [~2000+ vCPUs];
• ~7-15k HTTP reqs/sec.

Imagine leading the teams that are the backbone of that scale! 

• Have a B.Sc. in Computer Science or related studies or equivalent working experience
• Have 8+ years of software engineering management experience.
• Have successfully managed a tree of 40+ software engineers.
• Have successfully managed multiple agile software teams.
• Have experience and mastery over common patterns and challenges in full-stack web development and microservice architecture.
• Have experience working with some of these technologies: AWS, Kubernetes, Prometheus, Jenkins, Ruby on Rails, Go, Typescript, React, Big Data, Payment Gateways.
• Have excellent communication skills in English, including communicating well across different functions.
  
  

Then we would love to talk to you!

• Have a Master’s, Ph.D. degree, further education or experience in engineering, computer science, or another technical related field.
• Have worked at other software companies and have a business mindset.
• Have demonstrable experience of driving consensus on a technical vision and executing on realizing the vision.
• Have managed teams across multiple locations or remote teams.
  
  

We offer a competitive package including Stock Options and a culture where you can be yourself.  The best part: you will join an awesome team which believes that together we are greater than the sum of our parts, and who deeply cares about those around us. Next to this you can expect;

• A diverse and international team with over 50 different nationalities.
• Trendy offices located in the heart of Amsterdam and Assen with an easy-going atmosphere.
• The fun part! Our Activity Committee plan everything from ‘CataFooty’ to International Food Festivals, Friday Drinks, Board Game Nights, Pub Quizzes and Boot Camps!
• And there’s more! Paid holidays, Headspace Membership, Holiday allowance and Pension plan paid for by Catawiki.