M6 Engineering Director
I deliver results against a strategic company-level business objective or key component of the EPD mission
Scope
Area of ownership and level of autonomy / ambiguity
- I am fully accountable for delivering results against a strategic objective directly supporting a company or EPD level business objective over a one to two year time horizon.
- I am able to masterfully guide my org to impactful outcomes in the face of significant organizational, strategic and technical ambiguity and change.
Collaborative Reach
Organizational reach and extent of influence
- I actively up-level engineering and partner functions through organizational, people, and process insights and initiatives.
- I anticipate challenges and influence the direction of the entire engineering organization and at times EPD as a whole.
Impact Levers
Organizational levers typically exercised to achieve business impact
- I hold myself and the managers reporting to me accountable for the inspection, oversight, prioritization and delivery of the results needed by the organization.
- I work closely with cross-functional partners to conceive of, articulate and motivate long-term business strategy for my area.
- I drive the full talent lifecycle for my org, holding myself and my managers accountable for creating a healthy culture of support, growth and excitement that empowers our teams to deliver at a high level.
🏆 Results
Impact
- I drive the most important long-term priorities for the company that create the highest value for my customer
- I know when to shut down company-wide initiatives that don't create value and how to re-structure my team's or org's roles and goals
- I know which levers to pull to drive meaningful results, and consider company-wide implications of my team's work
- I am accountable for ensuring that results do not come at the expense of long-term growth, retention, or psychological safety within cross-functional teams in my organization
Ownership
- I have a sense of responsibility, and obligation to act on opportunities I see across the company
- I am accountable for the inspection, oversight, and pruning of the portfolio of projects within my domain and hold managers reporting to me accountable for delivering the results needed by the organization
- I am ultimately accountable for the alignment between the portfolio of projects in my domain, and Dropbox’s business objectives
Decision Making
- I act thoughtfully, and decisively in critical situations even when making challenging or unpopular decisions
- I ensure that investments are appropriately prioritized across my portfolio of projects and Dropbox’s business objectives
Operational Excellence
- I ensure the right balance of operational excellence, innovation, and speed across teams against company-level goals
🌟 Direction
Innovation
- I push boundaries and generate ideas—even if they are risky—that drive the greatest company-wide, and customer impact
- I create an environment that fosters innovation, and helps Dropboxers take smart risks, own the outcomes, and learn from failures
Strategy
- I deeply understand what is happening in the business and in the market. I use this understanding to work with my cross-functional partners to define a long-term vision for my team or org
- I anticipate challenges for and influence the direction of my teams or org, even when faced with significant misalignment, to execute work toward that vision
- I effectively and broadly evangelize my strategy to remove roadblocks and ensure my team executes consistently against the direction I lay out
- I am able to resolve cross-engineering misalignments blocking decisions on strategic choices with long-term consequences
🌳 Talent
Personal Growth
- I have self-awareness and connect with others with empathy
- I proactively ask for feedback from those I work with and have self-awareness about my strengths, and take actions on my development areas
- I drive discussions with my manager about aspirational goals, and seek out opportunities to learn and grow
- I invest time in being a better manager and leader
Hiring and Talent Development
- I attract senior and diverse talent across a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, locations to Dropbox and have strong followership across the company
- I am actively involved in interviewing and assessing senior and leadership candidates. I am a debrief mod for senior candidates and a leader in hiring committee. I look holistically at our hiring processes/standards and help drive improvements
- I take a holistic approach to talent engagement, and retention across my teams/org
- I successfully drive the full talent lifecycle for my group, including hiring, culture-building, growth, performance management and retention
- I actively initiate and lead cross-org initiatives that improves processes, people experiences, and technologies for people across the company
- I champion a high-performance culture across the company, create an environment for continuous growth and development, and identify career opportunities for Dropboxers across teams ensuring they are well leveraged
- I am an expert at growing great managers both able to effectively run their teams and who can themselves grow great managers
Organizational Design
- I have a clear succession plan, and build a strong bench that sets my team up for success in the future for key roles on my team with a long-term view
- I invest in developing a pipeline of future leaders for Dropbox
- I help prioritize, and structure the engineering organization to successfully execute against a portfolio of investments
- I ensure projects are staffed appropriately to set them up for success, placing my strongest technical leaders where they are the most needed and impactful
🌈 Culture
Collaboration
- I remove barriers to collaboration across Dropbox
- I influence, and build relationships with leaders across the company while expertly navigating organizational dynamics
Organizational Health
- I sponsor community-building efforts and inclusion initiatives
- I have a strong grasp of organization design, and know when to apply small or large changes to increase results or team health
- I am able to debug and address the vast majority of organizational health issues
- I practice vigilance in surfacing cultural issues that might not be explicitly raised to me. I proactively solicit feedback from my team on culture and leverage tools at hand (e.g. Pulse, Soapbox) to gain deeper insight into my team
- When I become aware of any lapse in my team’s culture, I communicate and work with my leadership team follow through on plans to correct and prevent recurrence of the lapse
- I practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis
Communication
- I communicate complex, challenging, or unpopular ideas with poise and conviction, and gain commitment from others
- I write crisp narratives to create understanding, influence others, and enable effective decision-making across my org
- I engage in executive-level communications and represent Dropbox effectively in external forums
Culture Leader
- I create an environment of psychological safety to support connection, empathy, and healthy conflict
- I shape Dropbox's culture and personify Dropbox core values. I work to elevate existing standards while coaching my other reports on how to do the same
- I help orgs foster relationships across Dropbox, creating connection and inclusion across different orgs at Dropbox
🦉 Craft
Business Acumen
- I stay current on Dropbox’s business, product, customers, and competitive market
- Dropbox’s strategy and business priorities inform my and my org's priorities
Architecture Design
- I’m capable of reviewing the overall health and engineering quality of a system or collection of features - including requiring regular health reviews, reviewing key metrics, test strategy and ensuring that the health and maintenance of my organization's systems
Technical Strategy
- I hold my team accountable for alignment of the software and systems in my area to overall technical strategy, making tradeoffs where appropriate in consultation with staff and principal engineers