About FIRY
We build companies that help people create, compete, and grow.
FIRY (NYSE: FIRY) is a founder-led global holding company built to fuel business potential. Founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Andrew Paradise, FIRY began by inventing an entirely new category: real-money skill-based mobile gaming. What started as a single bold idea became Skillz, a platform with more than 90 million registered users and one of the largest sources of first-party behavioral data in gaming.
Today, FIRY is building something much bigger.
We're creating a portfolio of category-defining businesses operating at the intersection of AI, identity, gaming, commerce, and performance marketing. Each business is successful on its own. Together, they create a flywheel of technology, data, and distribution that's difficult to replicate.
- Skillz: The competition platform that pioneered real-money skill-based gaming and continues to power millions of competitive experiences while generating unique behavioral insights.
- RZR: Our AI-native performance advertising platform, rebuilt from first principles and profitable for three consecutive quarters, helping brands acquire customers more intelligently.
- Beamable: The infrastructure powering the next generation of live games, giving developers everything they need to build, operate, and scale online experiences.
FIRY is publicly traded on the NYSE and headquartered in Las Vegas, with hubs in San Francisco, New York City, and Bengaluru.
We're still early.
We're looking for builders who want to create products that define industries—not simply compete in them.
About the Role
This is an opportunity to shape the future of one of the world's leading competitive mobile gaming platforms.
As Vice President of Engineering at Skillz, you will define the technical vision and lead the engineering organization responsible for the platform powering millions of competitive gaming experiences. Reporting directly to the General Manager, you'll serve as a key member of the executive leadership team, partnering across Product, Data Science, Finance, and Operations to influence company strategy while building the technology that drives our next phase of growth.
You will lead a global engineering organization spanning the US and Bangalore, with responsibility for Product Engineering, Platform, Infrastructure, and Data. Beyond delivering products, you'll build and inspire high-performing teams, cultivate a culture of technical excellence, and drive the architectural decisions that enable Skillz to scale with reliability, speed, and innovation.
This role is ideal for a seasoned engineering executive who thrives at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and people leadership and who is energized by solving complex engineering challenges in gaming, distributed systems, real-time services, payments, and platform scalability.
What You'll Do
- Define and execute the long-term technical vision and multi-year engineering roadmap, aligning technology investments with business strategy, product priorities, and company growth objectives.
- Lead the global engineering organization across Product Engineering, Platform, Infrastructure, and Data, building an organization known for technical excellence, operational discipline, and high-quality execution.
- Build, mentor, and develop exceptional engineering leaders and teams, fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, innovation, and continuous learning.
- Partner closely with Product Management, Data Science, Finance, and executive leadership to shape company strategy, prioritize investments, and deliver impactful customer experiences.
- Champion modern engineering practices including cloud-native architecture, CI/CD, observability, incident response, security-by-design, and developer productivity to improve engineering velocity and platform reliability.
- Drive architectural decisions that ensure the Skillz platform continues to scale securely and efficiently while supporting new products and evolving business needs.
- Lead execution across a globally distributed engineering organization, proactively identifying delivery risks, removing obstacles, and ensuring successful outcomes for critical initiatives.
- Serve as the executive engineering voice, communicating complex technical topics clearly to senior leadership and helping translate business strategy into engineering execution.
- Continuously improve engineering operations, establishing metrics, processes, and best practices that enable teams to deliver with predictability, quality, and speed.
Key Competencies
Executive Leadership
- Proven ability to lead large, globally distributed engineering organizations through periods of growth, transformation, and organizational scale.
- Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence executive stakeholders, align cross-functional teams, and translate technical complexity into business decisions.
- Experience building high-performing engineering cultures that attract, retain, and develop exceptional talent.
Technical Excellence
- Deep technical expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, backend platforms, and large-scale software architecture.
- Strong architectural judgment with the credibility to engage deeply with engineering teams on technical strategy, system design, and engineering best practices.
- Experience driving engineering excellence through modern software development practices, reliability engineering, observability, automation, and operational maturity.
Operational Leadership
- Demonstrated success delivering complex, cross-functional initiatives while balancing speed, quality, and long-term scalability.
- Strong operational discipline with experience establishing engineering metrics, improving developer productivity, managing risk, and driving continuous improvement.
Qualifications
- 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering managers or senior engineering leaders at the VP or Senior Director level within a high-growth technology company.
- Gaming industry experience is required, with a genuine passion for gaming and a strong understanding of player experiences.
- Proven track record of building and scaling engineering organizations supporting consumer-facing products or platforms at significant scale.
- Hands-on background in distributed systems, system architecture, and mobile backend platforms. Experience with real-time systems, payments, fraud prevention, trust and safety, or high-availability platforms is strongly preferred.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience. Experience in a publicly traded or late-stage venture-backed technology company is preferred.
Total Starting Compensation including Base + Bonus + Equity: $721,700
Location: Hybrid in San Francisco, California
Travel Requirement: Less than 10%
Why FIRY
- You are at the center of everything. Corporate roles at FIRY do not support one business. They support the infrastructure, strategy, and execution that makes three independent businesses work and compounds as they grow together.
- Founder-led. Andrew Paradise founded Skillz in 2012 with a single conviction: that fair, real-money skill-based competition should exist at scale. Thirteen years later, he has taken the company public on the NYSE, built a portfolio of three independent businesses, earned 90+ patents, and won the largest false advertising verdict in U.S. history. He is still here, still the founder, still the CEO, still building. That kind of long-term commitment is rare. At FIRY, it defines the culture from the top down.
- A portfolio at the beginning of its compounding phase. Four consecutive quarters of sequential revenue growth. Q1 2026 revenue up 33% year-over-year. RZR at 120%+ year-over-year growth in Q1 2026 and profitable for three consecutive quarters. The flywheel is turning.
- A mission worth the work. FIRY's mission is to fuel business potential. The systems FIRY builds help developers build businesses, advertisers acquire the right users, and infrastructure that turns competitive play into a scalable commercial engine. The addressable market across performance marketing, gaming infrastructure, and skill-based competition is $45B+.
- Comprehensive Benefits. 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision for you and your dependents. 401K matching, equity incentives, pre-tax benefit options, and more.
- Wellness Support. Meditation and mental health resources, physical fitness coaching and classes, family planning assistance, virtual therapy sessions, and more.
- Time Off. Competitive PTO and company holidays.
- Las Vegas Headquarters. FIRY operates in a five-day-a-week, collaborative office environment at our 36,000+ square foot Las Vegas headquarters. Free daily catered lunch, snacks, a full-size gym with showers, commuter benefits, team events, and more.
FIRY embraces diversity and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As part of our commitment to diversifying our workforce, we do not discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex, gender, gender identity, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, citizenship, veteran status, or disability status, and we operate in compliance with applicable fair chance ordinances.
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