Head of Engineering, ISM

Job Description

Job Description

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.

About Mood Media and ISM

• 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.

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 

Mood Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment based on objective work-related criteria, without discrimination based on age, disability, ethnic origin, gender, marital status, race, religion, responsibility for dependents, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristics protected by applicable governing laws.