Director, Software Development, Personalization Job ID: 2840108
Audible, Newark, NJ, United States
At Audible, we believe stories have the power to transform lives. It’s why we work with some of the world’s leading creators to produce and share audio storytelling with our millions of global listeners. We are dreamers and inventors who come from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences to empower and inspire each other. Imagine your future with us.
ABOUT THIS ROLE
As a Director, Software Development, you'll lead a high-performing team building innovative personalization systems that power content discovery and recommendation experiences across Audible's platforms. This position requires a leader with strong technical acumen in machine learning systems, proven people management experience, and the ability to drive technical strategy while delivering customer-focused personalization solutions.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The Personalization team's mission is to help customers discover their next great listen by personalizing every interaction they have with Audible content. We develop scalable frameworks and systems that transform customer signals into meaningful insights, enabling personalized, contextual recommendations across our platforms. Our teams work with cutting-edge ML technologies and large-scale distributed systems to process billions of content interactions and deliver real-time personalized experiences.
ABOUT YOU
You're a strategic technical leader who thrives on solving complex personalization problems at scale. You have deep experience building and leading engineering teams, with a strong foundation in recommendation systems and distributed computing. You're passionate about developing talent and creating an inclusive team culture that drives innovation. You demonstrate excellent judgment in balancing technical tradeoffs while maintaining unwavering focus on customer experience and business impact.
As a Director, Software Development, you will...
- Lead and grow a team of ML/software engineers building personalization and recommendation systems, providing technical mentorship and career development while fostering an inclusive environment.
- Own the technical strategy and roadmap for personalization systems that power discovery experiences across Audible platforms.
- Drive architectural decisions and technical excellence in building scalable recommendation pipelines and frameworks.
- Partner with product, science, and platform teams to define and execute on personalization initiatives.
- Establish and optimize development processes that enable rapid experimentation while maintaining high quality standards.
- Build mechanisms to measure and improve the customer impact of our recommendation systems.
- Lead hiring and development of diverse technical talent.
- Drive operational excellence in deploying and maintaining large-scale personalization systems.
- Influence cross-team technical decisions and contribute to broader organizational strategy.
- Champion best practices in ML engineering, including experimentation, testing, and monitoring.
ABOUT AUDIBLE
Audible is the leading producer and provider of audio storytelling. We spark listeners’ imaginations, offering immersive, cinematic experiences full of inspiration and insight to enrich our customers' daily lives. We are a global company with an entrepreneurial spirit. We are dreamers and inventors who are passionate about the positive impact Audible can make for our customers and our neighbors. This spirit courses throughout Audible, supporting a culture of creativity and inclusion built on our People Principles and our mission to build more equitable communities in the cities we call home.
Minimum Requirements
- 7+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years of people management experience.
- Experience building and operating large-scale ML/recommendation systems in production.
- Technical background in distributed systems, data processing, and ML infrastructure.
- Track record of delivering complex technical projects through effective team leadership.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field.