Role SummaryMood Media is seeking a hands-on Head of Engineering for In-Store Marketplace (ISM) who can inherit an existing engineering team, stabilize and improve delivery, and mature the platform into Mood's broader operating model. The role is execution-first: product direction and platform strategy are set in partnership with Mood product leadership; this leader owns engineering execution, operating cadence, delivery quality, capacity planning, and cost-to-output improvement.
What This Role Is- A practical Head of Engineering
- A team-in-transition leadership role: inherit, stabilize, document, retain, and improve the current team rather than rebuilding from scratch.
- An operating-model role: cadence, release discipline, support boundaries, on-call/incident hygiene, QA, engineering metrics, budget discipline, and capacity planning.
- A business-unit engineering role: translate product priorities, customer commitments, ad-ops/support needs, and executive tradeoffs into executable engineering plans.
Core Responsibilities- Own engineering execution for the ISM roadmap, including sprint/release cadence, sequencing, dependencies, delivery risks, and cross-functional commitments.
- Run and mature the existing ISM engineering team, preserving institutional knowledge while introducing clearer accountability, role clarity, and operating rhythm.
- Improve cost-to-output discipline through budget governance, vendor and partner evaluation, capacity planning, and transparent tradeoff recommendations.
- Strengthen production operations: observability, incident response, on-call coverage, release quality, recurring-defect prevention, and support escalation boundaries.
- Partner with product leadership, sales, account teams, ad operations, analytics, support, and executive stakeholders to translate commitments into realistic delivery plans and phased alternatives.
- Document domain knowledge, platform assumptions, integration boundaries, release procedures, decision history, support playbooks, and customer/retailer nuances to reduce key-person dependency.
- Assess architecture, workflows, APIs, data/reporting pipelines, campaign-management dependencies, and technical debt enough to make sound sequencing and resourcing decisions.
- Coordinate with Mood platform and operations teams, including relevant Harmony, Unity, customer operations, analytics, device/network, and in-store media capabilities.
- Protect delivery focus by distinguishing product development from support patterns that should be operationalized, automated, or routed outside core engineering capacity.
- Communicate concise progress, risks, decisions, cost/capacity tradeoffs, and escalation needs to executive stakeholders with candor and context.
Required Qualifications- 8+ years of engineering, platform, SaaS, ad-tech, commerce-media, martech, digital signage, IoT/device-fleet, or enterprise-platform leadership experience.
- 3-5+ years running an engineering organization of comparable scale, roughly 15-40 engineers or equivalent blended employee/contractor capacity.
- Demonstrated experience inheriting an existing team or platform and improving delivery predictability without defaulting to a rebuild.
- Hands-on operating discipline across backlog intake, sprint/release planning, milestone tracking, incident response, QA/release quality, observability, and engineering metrics.
- Experience operating within cost discipline: budgets, headcount governance, vendor/partner tradeoffs, delivery cost per output, and executive reporting against operating plans.
- Credible technical depth across cloud/platform architecture, APIs, data pipelines/reporting, integration patterns, production operations, and technical-debt tradeoffs.
- Strong cross-functional execution with product, support, operations, sales/account teams, analytics, ad operations, and executive stakeholders.
- Low-ego, high-ownership leadership style with the emotional intelligence to earn trust from an existing team while introducing accountability.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially concise executive updates and clear decision framing.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience in PE-backed, cost-disciplined, carve-out, integration, or portfolio-company environments.
- Experience with retail media, commerce media, ad tech, campaign workflow, measurement/attribution, digital signage, in-store media, DOOH/audio, or distributed device/media platforms.
- Experience building scalable practices.
- Familiarity with DSP/SSP/ad-server integrations, partner APIs, campaign trafficking, reporting pipelines, or retailer/advertiser operating requirements.
- Midwest / Indianapolis / Fishers operating cadence capability during the transition period.
For further information about Mood Media, please visit www.moodmedia.com.
