Web3 Engineering Manager

About Nori

We’re a team of believers. We believe that humanity can stop and even reverse climate change by removing over 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. How do we get people to remove that much carbon at scale? Pay them! Nori’s marketplace is the infrastructure that creates the financial incentive for people and companies to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the air.

Nori is a venture-backed and highly values-oriented company. Our focus is on people and the planet. We’re composed of a diverse set of people with complementary skill sets, all unified in the mission of restoring the world’s atmospheric carbon balance back to 300ppm.

We strongly suggest that you read in detail about our company values and mission at https://nori.com/careers.

About the role

At Nori we follow a lightweight Scrum process. We take Nori’s value of Continuous Improvement seriously and are always refining our process to suit the needs of the team and the moment. We lean heavily on developer-written tests and CI/CD to have confidence in our releases. Our QA functions focus on elaborating test plans with engineers, filling in gaps in our automated test coverage, and looking at the big picture.

Our product and design team members are relentlessly customer-focused and spend a great deal of their time learning from our stakeholders and customers on both sides of the marketplace. Nonetheless, we work to create opportunities for all members of the product and engineering teams to have as much access to stakeholders and customers as they want.

Who You’ll Work With

In this early engineering management role you will have a lot of influence over the team and the process as we grow. You will report to the Head of Engineering and collaborate closely with our Project Manager, Product Managers (1 for each side of our marketplace), DevOps and QA. You will also have ample opportunity to interact with the other teams throughout the company.

Each of these teams work a little bit differently, but they work hand in hand with each other to create an inventory of verified carbon removals that can be sold through our marketplace.

The Product Team

The Product Team where this role lives is responsible for the Nori marketplace, supply-side enrollment app, marketing website, and any of the technical/software aspects of Nori’s work. We are actively expanding the product team to build out a second product delivery squad. The Product team works with the other teams—Supply, Sales, and Communications—to support business development needs.

The Supply & Methodology Teams

The Supply team works with Nori Suppliers: anyone who can verifiably remove and store CO2 from the atmosphere. The Methodology team works on developing the requirements for how projects are enrolled (see current methodology). Both teams report to the Head of Supply and Methodology. As Nori’s current focus is on our Croplands Methodology, the Supply team is working with farmers as well as the partners and companies around them to enroll croplands into the Nori market.

The Demand Team

The Demand team sells carbon removals. Specifically they sell Nori Removal Tonnes (NRTs) to B2B customers as well as through partnerships with other companies, like NFT marketplaces and carbon footprint companies. They stay in tight communication with the Supply team about how much inventory they will have to work with. And they partner with the Communications team around how to get marketing messaging out, and create new content for presenting to potential customers and partners.

The Communications and Marketing Team

The Comms and Marketing team produces and hosts our two podcasts, Reversing Climate Change and Carbon Removal Newsroom, as well as manages all our marketing and social media channels.

Key Aspects of the Role

• Creative problem solving. We’re a small team solving big problems and there will always be more work than time to do it. Enabling the team to deliver customer value efficiently, predictably, and with high quality.
• Collaboration and communication. We’re a cross-functional team; clear communication without ego, frustration or defensiveness is expected from everyone. Assume best intentions and Honesty above all else are two of Nori’s company values.
• Learning. Are you an expert in DeFi, Carbon Markets and Regenerative Agriculture? I didn’t think so! The state of the art is changing quickly in all of those areas and there will be tons of opportunities to learn! A big dose of self-directed learning will be essential to your success here. Continuous Improvement is another Nori value.
• Adaptability. Nori is still a very small company. We strive to avoid distractions and limit work in progress (another Nori value) but plans and priorities do change as they do in every startup. You’ll get the opportunity to work with different people and on varied projects.

Our Tech Stack

Node.JS, Typescript, React, Next.js, GraphQL, Relay, GCP, Kubernetes, Hardhat, Solidity.

You’ll Be Responsible For…

• Coaching, supervising, hiring and developing a team of software engineers
• Establishing and measuring metrics to monitor the team’s delivery quality and tempo
• Advising the leadership team on resourcing and hiring needs
• Facilitation of technical design and tasking sessions
• Championing sustainable and professional engineering practices
• Improving team practices such as code reviews, design documents, and automated testing
• Helping software engineers execute architectural improvements guided by the Head of Engineering and product evolution guided by the Product Managers

Must-Haves

• 1-3 years of demonstrated experience:

• as a software engineer on an agile team
• managing software development projects and supervising developers

Nice-to-Haves

• Node.JS and/or Typescript exposure
• EVM blockchain and smart contract experience
• Solidity smart contract development experience
• Stripe integration or related shopping cart experience
• Experience with two-sided marketplaces
• Experience working in a startup environment

You’ll be a good culture fit here if you can...

• Handle a steep learning curve
• Enjoy a lively discussion about the problem or technical problem at hand
• Are open to sharing your work in progress and getting feedback early and often
• Work with abstract ideas and requirements to create something more concrete
• Know how to measure progress meaningfully
• Stay playful and light without taking things too seriously or personally
• Limit work in progress and stay focused on the current goal

Key challenges in this role

We’re still a small team and the temptation to get pulled in many directions is strong. We will rely on your ability to stay focused. You will be expected to be a leader in the skills you bring, to continue to hone those skills, and to learn some new ones at a pace that works for you. We will also expect you to devote some time to coaching and mentoring other team members with the goal of distributing knowledge across the team and continually bringing up the level of the entire team.

What’s the payoff for all this hard/fun work?

You’re not just working at some mobile ads startup—you’re directly helping build products to reverse climate change. Here are some of the non-cash benefits we offer:

• 100% of health, dental, and vision benefits covered for you and dependents
• Four weeks of PTO, up to five after a year of service
• Paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s off every year
• 12 weeks of parental leave
• 401k with 3% company match
• Relocation assistance if necessary
• Stock options
• NORI tokens

Beyond those measurable benefits, we also think this is just a really fun place to work:

• You’ll get to work with experts in carbon sequestration and marketplace economics who are defining a new industry.
• There is a steep learning curve here, and for people who get excited by that, there’s no better place to be.
• We have a lot of fun in our office, keep a well-stocked pantry and fridge, and generally like each other’s company. Happy hours in Ballard happen regularly!