VP, Authentication and Authorization
Position Summary
About Discovery’s Direct to Consumer Technology Organization
Within Discovery there is a global organization working at the crossroads of technology and entertainment, building a platform to power experiences that enable Discovery’s content creators to tell better, more engaging stories to millions of viewers across the world. Our mission remains true to the principles that founded Discovery – every day we seek to ignite peoples’ curiosity to explore and understand the world.
Discovery's direct to consumer technology group operates like a well-funded start-up. We are fast, nimble and have fun developing an innovative global platform for iconic brands, including Discovery Channel, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Eurosport, Food Network, HGTV, Motor Trend and Animal Planet.
About the Opportunity
Discovery is looking for technically deep, analytical software engineering leaders to join our growing New York City team. If your interest lies in building highly scalable container-based services, then this may be the team for you. We are seeking a head of Global Identity, Authentication and Authorization Engineering with strong talent development, process, technology and communications skills to join in our adventure.
The ideal candidate is an established leader of leaders, responsible for managing an area or department. You are responsible for defining the mission of your team, inspiring and motivating your team to pursue that mission, and setting strategic goals for them to achieve in that pursuit. You have a balanced understanding of business and technical objectives and your guidance is sought out because your decisions drive the best outcomes for both. You own a set of key performance indicators important to the business, and drive outcomes for the business by setting goals against these metrics.
Responsibilities
1. You understand a broad range of computer science concepts, and know how, when, and when not to use them. You can dive deep into a wide range of technical problems offering suggestions and feedback to your team. Your interest in computer science has not faded as you moved into a leadership role and you are still comfortable with technical details.
2. Your written and verbal communication skills are top notch. You can distil key points out of complex technical descriptions to share with non-technical stakeholders, adapting your language and style of communication depending on the audience. You communicate through data, dates, and facts using emotion judiciously to motivate and inspire.
3. You lead by example and do not consider yourself above individual contributor work. You are comfortable teaching best practices by showing people, not just telling people. Teams follow your lead because you are an inspirational leader and because you can show everyone high quality examples of your own work.
4. You have demonstrated that you can manage multiple teams, or an area of strategic importance and significant impact. You are able to work effectively through other managers reporting to you.
5. You influence teams and groups outside your wider organization with your deep insight and strategic thinking.
6. You have participated in strategic planning and demonstrated good judgment in setting and delivering against strategic goals for your team. You are able to drive outcomes using key performance indicator goals within your team rather than dictating specific deliverables.
7. You have demonstrated the ability to make great hiring decisions as is evidence by the performance of engineers and managers on your team, and you are able to retain and develop the best engineers and managers. You have mentored and managed other engineering managers successfully. Your team is capable and autonomous without your continuous oversight and decision making as a result of your coaching of your own managers.
8. You create a culture of innovation, encouraging your team members to find new and better ways to achieve their goals. You foster an appropriate culture of tolerance for taking innovative risk.
Requirements
* 10+ years experience as an engineering manager of multi-region API’s with in-depth knowledge of software engineering, application security and overall development lifecycle
* Proficiency in programming design patterns, knowledge of Java and/or Golang preferred
* Proficiency with generally available databases and what types of applications they best support
* Knowledge of, and professional experience with most AWS services, and deeper knowledge of EC2, S3, Kinesis, CloudFront and CloudWatch
* Usage and deep understanding of Docker and Kubernetes
* Experience with Oauth2, SAML, RECAPTCHA, 2FA / OTP, WEBAUTHN, identity federation and rate limiting technologies
* Experience integrating with web, mobile and connected TV applications as well as third party identity, authentication and authorization providers
* Demonstrated track record of applying general security principles to at scale, global API’s for Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (input validation, output encoding, cryptography, HTTP status codes)
* Track record of innovating on enabling low friction consumer experiences for authentication (e.g. passwordless authentication, dynamic QA codes, biometrics)
* Track record of leading the planning and operations for incident response and after-action recovery
* Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Math, Engineering or equivalent work experience
* Familiarity with GDPR and other emerging privacy regulations is preferred
* Familiarity and curiosity about blockchain and AI technologies (e.g. risk-based authentication) to improve the consumer experience with authentication and authorization, while making them more secure preferred
* Must have the legal right to work in the United States