Technical Architect/CTO

CTO + CoFounder wanted for our Tech startup where we're trying to build Connected Mobility in parallel to a "short videos app" meant for dashcam videos getting recorded straight from the user's smartphone. So you can say we're a TikTok of dashcam videos at the front.

Expecting the individual is capable & willing to work on these below languages-

Our backend codes are in CakePHP,
Admin Panel in Laravel,
Android is in Java.
No iOS app yet but we plan to roll it out soon.

Hence, we're expecting the CTO to be having fair idea/expertise about these languages. Also, we don't have an iOS app at this point, but it would be benefecial if there's a fair knowledge about iOS apps as well. Also, since the server being used is AWS we are hoping the person knows how to efficiently utilize various features of the same while linking the things.

Proposed Salary may be available only after angel investor, VCs come on board.

Head/ Chief Architect - Engineering

About Our Client

Our client is headquartered in California and Y Combinator backed Shopify-like platform for creators & knowledge professionals (coaches, instructors, experts, artists etc.) to launch, manage and grow their business online. Founded by IIT/ IIM/ BITS/ Yale/ BCG Alumni and 3X Entrepreneurs, they are well funded and backed by top Indian VC firms along with start-up veterans like Kunal Shah (CRED). The company is founded by alumni from top IITs, IIMs, BITS, Yale including ex-entrepreneurs and from firms such as BCG, Hike, Dunzo and P&G.

Since the launch of  its first version in December 2020 they have grown 25X. Creators have earned more than $1 Million since launch through the platform.
We have just closed our series A (yet to announce) and are looking to build out our leadership team across functions.

About the role:

About the job

• Own and drive product development and engineering management in a fast paced, rapidly changing environment.
• Deliver architectural initiatives that drive revenue and improve efficiency inline with business strategy.
• Develop and maintain a aspirational architectural road map
• Maintain in-depth knowledge of IT industry best practices, technologies, architectures and emerging technologies.
• Build and lead the technical team with focus on infusing culture resulting in energetic & positive outcomes.

Requirements

• Relevant prior experience in a software product-based company in a leadership position. Minimum of 5+ years experience building applications in high level programming languages - Java, Python or Go
• Strong experience in either or all of databases: MySQL, MongoDB, NOSQL, SQL Server, Oracle. -Strong working knowledge on AWS & Google Cloud & Cloud security.
• Strong working knowledge of Web, caching technologies, API integration technologies & protocols.
• Experience with managing AGILE development methodology and inspire the team to follow best Scrum practices.
• Fair understanding of DevOps would be ideal
• Must be a strong and enthusiastic team player with excellent verbal and written communications skills.
• You are a good communicator who can explain technical concepts to product managers, designers, support and other engineers and you have curiosity about how things work
• Skills in Microservices Architecture, Product Roadmap& tech team management

About First Principles

We are a Tech Holding Company and our portfolio companies generate millions in revenue. What is unique about FirstPrinciples is that most of our companies remain controlled and majority owned by First Principles and its team members rather than by external investors. We are proud that our product engineering team builds world class products from India. https://firstprinciples.io/">https://firstprinciples.io/

About this Role

As we scale and build our organisation, we would like to add an individual to our core Technical Leadership who can scale our key products and projects and help us build and foster relationships with Enterprise clients.

We are looking for an experienced Technology Leader to join our fast growing organisation to help us with driving Technical Strategy, Approach and oversee the Implementation for internal and external products. You should be someone who loves Engineering, have amazing debugging skills and slay problems with technology. 

In this role, you will undertake Technical / Solution Architecture and should also be able to help team with Engineering and coding wherever required. That includes, working along with the team, writing code, doing R&D or POCs, ensuring we follow modern industry standards and building beautiful high performing Software and Applications and thus delivering a better solution and product. You will also help FP build strong relationships with clients and technical leadership on the client side.

You would be required to have a minimum of 10+ years of experience with a mix of Engineering, DevOps, Infrastructure, Cyber - Network Security, Enterprise Application Maintenance, Database Management along with Project, Client and People Management skills which are necessary to lead the team and be their voice. You should be a leader and not just a manager who loves delegating things to the off-shore team, but rather someone who would not hesitate to take over Git-Pull and start writing code and show ‘here is how it’s done’ and amaze everyone with your expertise! :-) 

Because this is a Senior role, you would also be involved working with the Product/Project Manager and will be responsible for the delivery and output.

Tech Stack [High-Level]: We are JavaScript focused i.e. we work in ReactJS, NodeJS, AngularJS, TypeForm, TypeScript, Redis. On the server side, we work with AWS/GCP/DO. Database: MySQL, PostgreS and MongoDb. API: REST and GraphQL API. We also have a strong DevOps stack - including Kubernetes(K8), Dockers and CI/CD automation. 

Interview Process: 

• 60 min Discovery Call
• 15 mins introduction and what you bring to the table (We love people who say, “We build the damn table”) 
• 15 min understanding your experience and background
• 15 min on why you want to join our team and your expectations, future plans
• 15 min Q&A
  
  
• 60-90 min Technical Interview  (May be more than 1)
• Technical Call
  
  
• 45-60 min Final Call
• 15 min discussion on results 
• 15 min CTC expectations / negotiations 
• 15 min closure
• 15 min buffer

• Develop and execute engineering strategy (including technology architecture, development stack, scalability, security etc.) of all our SaaS solutions while keeping in mind needs of business as usual and evolving product feature requirements
• Lead the engineering team and ensure good delivery management to deliver the product roadmap with high speed and quality
• Innovation – explore available technologies that may be useful to our context and run experiments and POCs to evaluate before adoption
• Bring automation and best practices to code management, testing and build & deployment processes
• Solve the most complex issues/initiatives through hands-on development
• Help the team members in resolving difficult technical issues
• Be a champion of engineering excellence: establish team metrics for measurement of engineering and operational excellence. Implement a consistent, regular process for assessment and improvement
• Provide thought-leadership to fellow team members by working as a guide and mentor to the rest of the team members

• Best in Industry Remuneration
• Attractive ESOP opportunity with huge potential upside
• Cutting edge technologies with always something new happening
• Start-up culture with full ownership and freedom
• Fully flexible hours and work from anywhere
• Super-fun work environment and colleague

• Microservices, Spring Boot, Core Java, Struts 2.0, JPA & Hibernate
• Hands-On experience in relational databases (MySQL Preferred)
• Experience in Data warehousing & Analytics
• Hands-on exposure in mobile application developmen

Qualifications

• B.E. / B.Tech from Tier 1 Institute

• 9+ years of experience in enterprise web application design and development with 4+ years of experience as an automation architect.
• Experienced in technology stack selection and the definition of solution, technology and integration architectures for small to mid-sized applications and cloud hosted platforms
• Strong understanding of various design and architecture patterns
• Experience in implementing and governing software engineering processes, practices, tools and standards for development teams
• Experience of setting up and operating the DevOps and automation infrastructure for continuous integration and delivery
• Full SDLC experience leveraging Agile, TDD and BDD for building and rolling out highly transactional and highly available platforms hosted on premise and on the cloud
• Proficient in effort estimation techniques
• Must be hands on technology and able to troubleshoot critical issues in design or code
• Experience in Mobile Applications automation using SeeTest, Appium
• Strong hands-on experience of designing and developing technology frameworks and micro-services, APIs, REST Web Services, leveraging Java and open source technology stack (i.e. Java, JavaScript, Node.js/ Angular.js/ React.js, Spring Bot, Non-blocking Java, etc. )
• Hands on experience with JBehave, Cucumber, TestNG, Extent Reports
• Strong design, development and performance tuning skills on at least two or more databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, NOSQL and NewSQL (e.g. PostgresQL, Cassandra, Mongo DB, Cosmos DB, MySQL etc.)
• Experience on enterprise architecture patterns and a couple of past examples of architecting high availability, scale and performance applications 
• Strong experience with code review and evaluate the architecture as well as design towards a set of business and technology goals
• Experience with SonarQube code coverage and code quality
• Experience with Cypress JavaScript automation
• Experience on command prompt tools like Shell Script, UNIX
• Hands on experience on Cloud stacks (AWS preferred)
• Hands on experience with standalone applications automation using UFT, LeanFT and VB Script
• Knowledge of principles on code quality, distributed applications, TDD & test automation, self-monitoring applications, refactoring and technical debt

We are looking for a technology leader that can lead a group that builds and runs a product. We are a product company so we develop, manage and grow our own products. Our key objectives include acquiring clients and growing our user base. Product development is an ongoing process.

We need a leader that has experience in developing technologies but also understands how to leverage 3rd party platforms. Integration into FB and Google systems are critical to our success.

We operate in the Marketing technology world. Understanding marketing data is a key requirement. The great opportunity of this position is that the Team Lead gets to design and participate in the entire product cycle. We manage our own product, marketing and sales process within the company.

We Work globally and you ll have a chance to interact with teams in New York, Europe, Latin America and India. We are looking for a software engineer who has played the role of a team lead and who has worked on all phases of SDLC from prototyping to feature delivery and scaling features. A capable result oriented visionary Technology lead with a unique experience in leading high performance development teams, increasing efficiency and productivity while reducing costs. Somebody with the ability to build and run technology platforms, evaluate opportunities and risks and deliver innovative new solutions to meet customer needs. Hands on experience on all facets of software application development, covering deployment, support, quality assurance, customer support, project management and process improvement. Strong planning abilities and setting product and technology strategies in B2C and B2B environments.

• Responsible for leading the team for successful delivery of projects assigned.
• Risk assessments for architectural solutions and proposed systems and technologies; should know how to do module planning and effort estimation.
• Develop overall technical strategy for projects from technical requirements.
• Help in Project planning, progress tracking & delivery verification.
• Keep track of time spent on individual project tasks, provide guidance & advice best technology approach to the team.
• Follow guidelines for quality delivery, project documentation, code management, etc.
• Implement new technologies which are good for business & guide the team members
• Must possess personality to switch tasks and projects frequently as each will have different priorities.
• Meet stipulated deadlines and timelines.
• Work in Agile based project methodology.
• Open for frequent short-term travel to US.

• Having a strong IT experience, minimum 10 years, along with team handling role.
• Expertise in PHP, MVC Frameworks and good technology exposure of at least one framework such as Laravel, Zend etc.
• Expertise in at least one JavaScript framework such as jQuery, AngularJS, React JS etc.
• Excellent exposure with bespoke and open-source technologies (e.g., Drupal/Magento, etc..).
• Sound knowledge of database designing and application architecture planning for Core & MVC projects
• Excellent knowledge of SQL scripting and MySQL database administration
• Sound understanding of OOP and MVC development.
• Must have strong experience in handling International Clients and overseas accounts.
• US Travelled would be preferred.
• Good debugging skills with browser extensions & server tools
• Experience with GIT/Jira/Agile.
• Experience in enterprise level architecture design including server management.
• Experience in handling AWS/cloud/ Dedicated enterprise servers.
• Experience in handling high volume, high traffic sites.
• Strong in technical knowledge and documentation.
• Should be able to think out of the box, solution driven and passionate about the work.
• Ability to communicate ideas and concepts.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement features spanning across systems in a manner that satisfies requirements of performance, scale, security and robustness
• Contribute to improvement of technology and execution processes in the company
• Collaborate in setting technology standards with technology leaders across the company
• Serve as a knowledge center on current and emerging technologies, and help train others when required
• Foster a strong technical culture by mentoring other engineers
• Keep up to date with the latest technologies, evaluate new tools

Relevant Experience and Qualifications 

• Demonstrated expertise in system-level design of large scale distributed systems on the Java stack, and experience with web services and service oriented architectures
• Solid experience with Spring (Core/Boot/Security/MVC/Data)
• Have 8 - 12  years of professional experience in software development.
• Extensive experience with modern open source systems including relational / non relational data stores and bigdata processing
• Experience with AWS stack, at least the common datastores and services 
• Experience with containerization technologies and concepts including Docker
• Basic knowledge about security concepts and secure coding
• Excellent analytical, conceptual and communication skills in spoken and written English.
• Experience leading projects developed across continents.

Great to have Experience and Qualifications 

• Knowledge of machine learning concepts, and some hands-on experience implementing machine learnt models
• Experience with infrastructure design for cloud based apps, especially AWS.
• Past experience with information and data security standards (PCI-DSS, ISO27000) very nice to have.