Senior Director of Platform &Product
The mission of Kitces.com is to help real financial advisors be better and more successful, creating a 100X multiplier effect for our work and the number of consumers we can positively impact with the power of financial planning delivered by a Kitces-supported financial advicer to their clients.
To achieve this mission, Kitces.com publishes the leading financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View and the Financial Advisor Success podcast, producing award-winning commentary on financial planning strategies and practice management trends for financial advisors ranked as the most Influential, Objective, Relevant, and Useful content amongst any online media publication for financial advisors.
Unlike traditional media sites, though, Kitces.com deliberately generates no revenue from advertising or sponsored content. Instead, we remain solely focused on creating value directly for our advisor readers in the form of one single deep-dive article each day, strengthening the awareness of and integrity of the Kitces brand through our quality and relevant content, and being compensated directly from our readers both on our site (for those who join our Members Section, hire us to speak and consult, or purchase our Kitces Courses and Summits), and through our co-owned financial services solutions for consumers (who may engage with our related financial advisory firms) as well as our business solutions for financial advisors themselves (for whom we have a number of businesses providing service and technology solutions for advisory firms).
Kitces.com is hiring a Senior Director of Platform &Product to lead the development of and serve as Product Owner for our digital media and online educational platform. In practice, this means learning how our Financial Advicer audience engages with our platform and its offerings, identifying and prioritizing improvements and new platform capabilities at the intersection of user demands and business strategy, lead our full-time developer team (and contractors, where appropriate) to build and implement the new features, and working cross-departmentally to deploy and launch. In addition, the Senior Director of Platform &Product should be able to strategize about the platform infrastructure and technical requirements to ensure stability and scalability as we grow, and have a strong focus on data-driven user experience, to help make UX improvements that strengthen the experience of, and bolster our Trusted-Source brand with, our Readers and Members.
So if you can’t stand the negative reader experience of media websites that are filled with annoying slideshows and interstitial ads and want to work for a digital media platform that avoids advertising and cares about building a good platform experience, are constantly curious about what drives engagement behaviors and have always wanted the opportunity to work with an existing and loyal audience to build new digital experiences for them, and love turning product visions into reality by leading a developer team through a data-driven iterative process while building a great developer culture, … then this is the job for you! 😊
Description/Responsibilities
This entirely virtually based staff position will report to Managing Director Rachel Zeller, and work directly with the Chief Financial Planning Nerd and lead visionary Michael Kitces, and serve as the Lead Engineer and Product Owner for the Kitces.com website and educational platform, including managing a growing team of contract and full-time employees in the Platform department.
This entirely virtually based staff position will report to Managing Director Rachel Zeller, and work directly with the Chief Financial Planning Nerd and lead visionary Michael Kitces, and serve as the Lead Engineer and Product Owner for the Kitces.com website and educational platform, including managing a growing team of contract and full-time employees in the Platform department.
Further description of annual responsibilities are indicated below.
Platform &Product Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with leadership on and then be accountable for driving the execution of our overall platform strategy and roadmap, with responsibility for the entire product development process for new Kitces features and capabilities, including maintaining the product roadmap, prioritizing the backlog, gathering internal and external stakeholder input to determine requirements and user journeys, leading development and QA, deployment in coordination with other departments, and outcome tracking.
- Responsible for managing the day-to-day and week-to-week developer team in their build process, mentoring and focusing the developers to optimize both their productivity and value of the developer team’s work output. (Currently we operate using a 2-week sprint cycle, though candidates will have the opportunity to set their own approach and cadence.)
- Accountable for the Platform experience of our readers and Members when they interact with the Kitces website, making iterative changes to improve on key Reader and Member metrics as they navigate to and engage with our offerings, and tracking and reporting on relevant metrics.
- Accountable for the management and maintenance of our (Wordpress) website, the Kitces Advicer Database (KAD), and other key integrated systems, as well as the identifying, vetting, and selection of potential new technology vendors and platform solutions to integrate with (or update or replace) existing systems, to ensure systems stability and scalability.
- Responsible for determining, tracking, and reporting relevant data metrics, regarding both utilization of the platform and product offerings, efficiency of the developer and building process, and outcomes of new features and capabilities.
- Leadership of the Platform/developer team, including the training and development of team members (weekly L10s and 1:1s, quarterly check-ins, and annual performance reviews), and responsible for the expansion of the Platform team by mapping out future seats and being able to distinguish between the needs of full-time hires vs contractors.
Key Candidate Traits
The ideal candidate should be self-motivated enough to work in a virtual environment with limited supervision (autonomous), have an extremely strong inclination for continuous learning (self-development), an immaculate attention to detail (organized and efficient), a service mindset (seeks to collaborate and to help and support others), an ability to work in a changing environment (adaptability), and be highly effective at team communication in a virtual environment.
The ideal candidate should be self-motivated enough to work in a virtual environment with limited supervision (autonomous), have an extremely strong inclination for continuous learning (self-development), an immaculate attention to detail (organized and efficient), a service mindset (seeks to collaborate and to help and support others), an ability to work in a changing environment (adaptability), and be highly effective at team communication in a virtual environment.
Key domains of required expertise and experience include:
- Building within and around Wordpress website platforms (e.g., Wordpress, Javascript, etc.)
- Developing standalone web-based apps to integrate into existing products/platforms (e.g., Golang, Python, Ruby, etc.)
- Determining and managing server infrastructure for websites, web apps, and underlying user databases
- Product Owner leadership in executing the product development process
- Running DevOps and leading a team of developers through ongoing sprints
- Leadership of developers and building good developer culture
- Building within and around Wordpress website platforms (e.g., Wordpress, Javascript, etc.)
- Developing standalone web-based apps to integrate into existing products/platforms (e.g., Golang, Python, Ruby, etc.)
- Determining and managing server infrastructure for websites, web apps, and underlying user databases
- Product Owner leadership in executing the product development process
- Running DevOps and leading a team of developers through ongoing sprints
- Leadership of developers and building good developer culture
Experience in digital media is strongly preferred but not required. Experience with EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) is preferred but not required.
Candidates must be U.S. Citizens and work primarily within the United States.
Compensation/Benefits
- Base salary $150,000 - $180,000/year based on experience
- Available bonus up to 12% of base salary, determined by meeting key Members Section and other business metrics
- $3,000 budget for additional training/skills education
- $4,000 conference budget
- $2,000 budget for technology hardware/software or related office materials
- Paid membership in a relevant membership association and for a relevant professional designation or certification
- 20 days of paid time off for combined vacation + sick, plus 6 national holidays
- Base salary $150,000 - $180,000/year based on experience
- Available bonus up to 12% of base salary, determined by meeting key Members Section and other business metrics
- $3,000 budget for additional training/skills education
- $4,000 conference budget
- $2,000 budget for technology hardware/software or related office materials
- Paid membership in a relevant membership association and for a relevant professional designation or certification
- 20 days of paid time off for combined vacation + sick, plus 6 national holidays
-Paid parental leave
-Participation in company health plan
- Participation in company 401(k) plan
-“No Meeting” Wednesdays
-Participation in company health plan
- Participation in company 401(k) plan
-“No Meeting” Wednesdays
What it’s like working at Kitces.com
We are a team that lives by our values, our support of one another and our commitment to the community we serve. The successful candidate will share these Kitces Core Values:
- Do the Right Thing
- Advisors First
- Be the Trusted Source
- Deposit More Than We Withdraw
- No A$$holes
- Get Your Nerd On
At Kitces.com we have all but eradicated internal email. All internal communication is done via Slack or through Asana tasks.
When on Slack calls, video is expected as we believe hearing voices and seeing faces makes for stronger communication and connections. We lean on technology tools to get things done and protect our time. An example is our use of the delayed-send on Slack messages. While anyone might have a great idea pop up at any time, we are careful to make sure messages are only sent during regular business hours to respect the work/home boundaries of our work-from-home (or work-from-anywhere) team.
As a company we try to front load meetings to the beginning of the week so that the end of the week can be more focused on Deep Work to maximize our personal productivity.
While, as a remote company, we tend to attract mostly hard-core introverts, we also recognize the value in creating work relationships, so we have a social committee that creatively offers a multitude of ways for people to connect in the ways they feel most comfortable.
To Apply:
Interested candidates for the Senior Director of Platform &Product should complete the pre-interview application https://airtable.com/shr9G3A3zW8lRIWNa
Questions may be sent to jobs@kitces.com.
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