Head of Engineering, ISM

Role Summary

Mood 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.

• Mood Media:
  The world’s leading experiential media company, serving a global physical‑world footprint through music, messaging, digital signage, AV systems, scent, managed services, creative content, retail media, advertising networks, and platform technology.
• In‑Store Marketplace (ISM): A Mood Media company and retail‑media platform built to standardize and unify digital in‑store media across audio and display inventory, connecting retailer/RMN supply with demand‑side advertisers, agencies, platforms, ad servers, and measurement partners.
• Engineering context: ISM is an existing platform and team that now needs clearer execution discipline, better delivery predictability, stronger production operations, reduced key‑person dependency, and a scalable cost‑effective delivery model.

• 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.

• 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 trade‑off 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 trade‑offs, and escalation needs to executive stakeholders with candor and context.

• 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…