Equilibria (“EQ”) is a high-growth, omni-channel premium CBD platform for women. We are dedicated to restoring balance to our community — physically and mentally — through our high quality CBD products and personalized dosage & delivery support. We are growing our team with proven, passionate, positive leaders and look forward to hearing from qualified candidates. Corporate Headquarters: River North, Chicago; Bioscience and Farm Operations: Longmont, CO. 

More about Equilibria

At Equilibria, “product” is defined as any physical or digital representation of the brand. It marries technology and design with customer & business/team needs, solving problems that increase company value and improve efficiency. As a company where physical goods are sold in tandem with a service (consultations with a Dosage Specialist are included with purchase), “product” touches deep into the human element of respectfully “holding space” for our customers, while simultaneously keeping this service offering efficient and supported by technology + automation. We may offer paid Dosage appointments and/or telemedicine services in the future, as well, which will add further technical complexity to our offerings but additional data points to better serve our fiercely loyal customer base!

“Product” also involves innovation, specifically targeting customer problems/desires that will further drive company growth and (when applicable) add proprietary intellectual property to the EQ portfolio. We innovate with the cannabis plant/process itself as well as delivery methods/modalities, and we have a lot up our sleeve for 2020!

Product touches every aspect of EQ’s ability to succeed, and WordPress (using Woocommerce) is the heart of the customer’s primary transactional experience, and therefore critical to product success.  This is a fast-paced environment in an industry (cannabis) zeitgeist, so thinking on your feet while being a team player is an absolute must. In 2019 we grew at least 50% month-over-month, and in 2020 our 20% goal MoM is aggressive but wholly achievable with the right technical footing.

Summary

This position is in-house in Chicago, IL and reports to our Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), who is also a co-founder and overseeing all product development/R&D, engineering/technology, and design. She is a software engineer by trade, and currently interviewing Head of Engineering candidates to make sure continuity of management is maintained as the team grows.

The Equilibria primary tech stack currently consists of WordPress+Woocommerce + many careful customizations (to date: 30-50hrs of design+dev work a week on new features, bug fixes, and improvements) to not only create a constantly-improving customer experience but also serve internal automation (workflows, reporting, etc.). Everyone who sees what we’ve done with a stereotypically simple stack is always surprised that a) it’s WordPress b) we’ve pulled off so much within so many constraints. We’ve genuinely used it as an application engine, as opposed to a plug and play stack….and now it’s time to ramp things up.

Within Q1 and Q2, the goal is to split use of WP/Woo to transactional + static content essentials (focused on our customers), while moving all internal + external tools to a web stack of our team’s collective choosing — warehousing our large quantities of user data, implementing architectural standards and upgrading security protocols, and transforming the lean tools ported into this stack into scalable drivers of insight and efficiency. 

This means WP/Woo will finally be allowed to focus on what it’s good at, while we also apply upgrades to massively scale to over a thousand transactions per day + concurrent use of features like interactive educational content + quizzes. Therefore, we are also performing a massive overhaul of our frontend UX to address upgrades to the business model (hint: this is about a lot more than just CBD!) and usability improvements given we have many customers over the age of 60. Despite the goal of splitting our stack, the need for WP/Woo is still going to be significant in our everyday for a long time to come.  We’re just being realistic about accommodating for scale, given our extremely custom needs (both customer-facing, and as far as internal tools & reporting goes) which is why it is not necessary or sensible for WordPress to be “everything” anymore.

Currently, we use Miro, Asana, Slack, Gsuite, and Beanstalk App to manage both product and project progress, with a focus on being iterative when at all possible.

Regarding benefits atop compensation, Equilibria will contribute toward medical insurance, for which we offer multiple options of coverage and premium. We also give every employee a monthly CBD allowance, along with other perks. Additional benefits coming this year!

Responsibilities

• Participate in product planning meetings (Mondays) and product stands (Wednesdays) so as to collaborate in selecting what’s in each weekly sprint.
• Ideally, your skillset is full-stack and you are just as happy in CSS/JS as you are in PHP, but we are open to candidates heavy on either side. Those more backend focused will also be on the team that works on splitting stack and mirroring data. 
• 85-90% of your week will be writing code, 10-15% meetings ... lots of fun team collaboration in there, though, as we all work very closely together.
• While our theme is super custom, so is our backend! We have built many plugins ourselves, and we expect you to know the WP + Woo functionality and APIs like the back of your hand.  If you’re a WP pro but new to Woo, we can chat about ramping up on Woo specifics.
• Participate in code reviews, PRs, ideation, automated testing + manual QA, etc.
• Work with our 2 delightful remote contract developers (FE + BE) dedicated to WP/Woo.
• Work closely with the Engineering Project Lead (EPL), who in addition to being a well-rounded engineer, manages deliverables.
• Speak up when you’re worried about technical debt, or something related to scaling!

Qualifications

• Positive attitude, even if deadlines looming
• Great communication skills with ability to defend points of contention and constructively criticize when necessary
• Patience for startup lifestyle
• Passion for women’s healthcare/wellbeing/our mission
• CS/SE degree a plus
• Experience with AutomateWoo, AffiliateWP, and other hefty plugins a plus, even better if you’ve written plugins yourself!
• Experience with external APIs (Square, Facebook, etc.) and SQL a plus