We’re working with an Albany NY based company in the e-commerce affiliate market (Amazon Affiliate, eBay Affiliate, etc.) that had enterprise software and is now offering a SaaS product based on it. They have a decent amount of existing revenue/MRR for this product.
The existing VP of Engineering is leaving and they might be looking to replace the entire dev team when this happens. The code has limited scalability and documentation, and the development processes (release planning, release cycles, etc.) are immature.
They are looking for a leader that can hit the ground running and build a new development team (2-3 people to start, growing within 6 months, with some external funding to help) very fast. This leader does not need to be an active coder but meeting as many of the the following criteria as possible is important. We understand it’s a big list and we definitely don’t expect anyone to meet all of our requirements.
Leadership and Knowledge
- Working on code is a low priority in this role, but a former coder who has moved into leadership is desired. They need to know what’s easy to develop and what’s complex, and should be able to review code and understand what it’s doing (or not doing). But we want a leader first and a coder second.
- The ability to assess and implement processes such as components of Agile, continuous development, and testing frameworks and approaches.
- The ability to put in appropriate processes and tools for managing this team and their code, and to develop appropriate KPI’s to measure progress and cause/effect of the departmental work.
- The ability to work as a positive part of an executive team with an interest in and experience with communicating with customers and partners. An understanding of other aspects of the business would be helpful (i.e. knowledge of the roles and challenges of support, sales, marketing, etc.). We want someone who gets along with others, likes to brainstorm and come up with creative ideas, and is personable.
- The ability to identify and ramp up a team very quickly to start fixing bugs and adding features within the first 30 days (money will be in the budget for recruiters if necessary, but it would be preferred to do internal recruiting).
- The ability to work in a startup type of environment without tons of resources, working long hours and turning on a dime when needed, but having a huge amount of fun while doing this.
Technical
- Familiarity with their technology stack – PHP, Javascript UI, MySQL, Git, Docker, Linux.
- Understand systems architectures i.e. Linux, Amazon AWS and S3, high availability architectures, etc.
- The ability to re-architect a codebase without introducing software regressions.
- Understanding of and experience in building scalable code and architectures (frameworks, queueing, data management, user interfaces, etc.).
- The ability to create a product roadmap and use cases for features.
- Intimate familiarity with one or more of the following (and their associated API) would be a big plus: eBay, Amazon, Jet, Rakkuten, Sears, Walmart. Shopping carts such as Magento, BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce and others would also be helpful.
Compensation and Benefits
Comp will be $70k-$90k plus equity. Benefits are good (medical, dental, optical) and will only get better.
Chris Labatt-Simon
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