You just made your first code commit in over a month. You don’t do it often, but damn, when you do, it’s a rush of euphoria. And, just in time, too. The sprint planning session with your team is about to start, and then it’s off to meet with a new data science candidate over coffee. 

Your typical day at Jiobit is anything but typical, and requires you to wear a whole lotta hats where you end up being coach and player. We’re looking for you to inspire and challenge engineers to be better engineers (and humans) while also bringing domain expertise to our tech stack and products. 

Your job is part mentor, part leader, part technologist, part developer, part therapist, and part tinkerer. You aren’t interested in maintaining things, but scaling and building. Seeing your team’s work being used by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis makes you tick. Your team pushes code and bam, people are instantly using it. Sometimes it sucks. Many times it’s awesome. All the time it’s motivating and thrilling.

If you’ve gotten this far, you are nodding your head and also probably:

• View engineering as equal parts art and science. There is such a thing as beautiful code. And the creative juices you get to flex through technical challenges you find therapeutic.

• Are okay with sucking at things - you gotta learn it somehow and in the beginning you might suck.

• Have some war stories about really screwing up a rollout or feature. It created some scars and calluses you won’t soon forget.

• Know that data can tell a good portion of the story and provide the foundation, but engaging with humans and qualitative insights paints the full picture.

• Ask the right questions and, when posed with a problem, you peel away the layers to reveal the core issue and don’t address just the symptoms. You lean on your instincts and good judgment. 

• The details aren't "beneath you." You roll up your sleeves and dive into the details. You employ an operational, get-er-done mindset. You could ask someone to run a query, but many times you’ll just go do it yourself.

• See the "butterfly effect" downstream impact of changes. You also realize the significance of your role, and the real impact your decisions have on the product, our team members, and our customers.  

• Think strategically. You’re able to see the big picture, especially how it translates to company success.

• And, you’re able to translate your vision to others. You work with the people team to turn plans into reality. You solicit feedback, manage change, and solicit champions among stakeholders in the business.   

• Take on responsibilities spanning: chief architect, mentor, diplomat, evangelist, strategist, therapist, project manager, influencer, negotiator, cheerleader.  

THE OPPORTUNITY & THE IMPACT

We are looking for someone to serve as our VP of Software Engineering. You will report to the CEO of the company.

This is someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment, and who wants to both enable (and mentor) those around them to create successes and grow but is also excited to make an impact with their own hands.  

At the end of the day, this person will play a key role in helping scale Jiobit’s business through technology and engineering - helping to build award winning, and customer-loving, products.

This role will ultimately be accountable for the reliability, security, scalability, and functionality for software across the entire Jiobit software stack. This leader will also manage and mentor 8 other software engineers, scaling the software organization over 2x in the coming year.

In particular, the ideal candidate will be:

• Domain expert (not just managerial) - you will be accountable for architecture, performance, and ultimately the quality of code for cloud. You roll up your sleeves and conduct technical product reviews and jam on ideas with your team to improve the product.

• Curious - doesn't need expertise in every aspect of our tech stack, but wants to learn more and finds it exciting.

• Process minded / execution driven - can keep the team on task and on schedule. Bring some order to structured chaos. You know that done is better than perfect.

• Innovation engine - brings new, challenging ideas to the team both within ENG and outside ENG

• Inspiring leader - engineers love working for you

• Mentor - coaches and leads by example and not just authority

• Hands on - still write some code, run scripts/queries, builds automation, can jump in and debug, would *like to* take on small dev tasks themselves but likely won’t have time. Likely checked in some code in the past year.

• Battle scars - has gone through startup life, knows challenges and has scaled teams

• Product minded - demonstrates a passion for the end to end consumer experience and not just thinking about engineering on a project basis

• Systems thinking - understands (or aptitude do understand) the entire software stack as well the impact of data

ABOUT US 

Jiobit is the first of its kind patented location sharing platform, enabling the longest lasting and smallest real-time location products (indoor or out) with best-in-class security.

Featuring a host of encryption and security technologies, Jiobit is trusted by federal government customers, law enforcement professionals, and thousands of pet owners and families, with usage in every populated continent in the world.

Jiobit has won an Editor's Choice Award with PCMag and has been featured on CNBC, Buzzfeed, Techcrunch, and USA Today to name a few. Jiobit has offices in Chicago and Silicon Valley. With a strategic investment from Netgear, Inc., along with Chicago-based Venture Capital firm, MATH Venture Partners, we are positioning the business for rapid growth.

WHAT YOU’LL GET

• Unlimited time off to juggle work/life balance

• Flexible work hours and location (work from home optional on Tuesday/Thursdays)

• Company retreats every 6 months

• Medical, dental, vision insurance (including 50% contribution for dependents)

• Paid holidays

• Short-term / Long-term Disability offered

• 401(k)

• Competitive Stock Option & Equity Packages for leadership role in the company

• Cash compensation between $150,000 - $200,000 based on experience levels of the candidate

QUALIFICATIONS

• BS or MS in Computer Science or related field

• 10+ years of hands-on software development experience Object Oriented design methodology and modern programming languages.

• Experience deploying cloud solutions to hosted providers (ex: AWS, GCP, Azure, Digital Ocean, etc.)

• Solid understanding of Computer Science fundamentals, algorithms and data structures

• Understanding of networks and communication protocols (HTTP/S, TCP, UDP)

• Expert understanding of architectural patterns of large, high-scale systems

• Experience leading/mentoring other software engineers and providing technical guidance

• Effective communication and collaboration across teams

• US work authorization, no H1-B sponsorships.

OUR STACK

• Cloud - AWS (IoT, Lambda, EC2, S3, SQS), Google Cloud Platform (AppEngine, Compute Engine, Pub/Sub), Java, Python, Go, SpringBoot, Guice

• Cloud Monitoring Tools (GCP Stackdriver, AWS CloudWatch)

• Data Store - Fully Encrypted NoSQL Datastores (GCP Datastore, AWS DynamoDB) 

• Mobile Applications - Android (Kotlin) and iOS (Swift/Objective-C)

• Web Apps - React, PHP, JS/jQuery, Node.js, HTML 

• Tools & APIs - Github, Jenkins, Jira, Firebase, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Intercom, Google Geolocation

• Embedded C (device level firmware)