About You: You are a full stack developer who is excited about developing from a clean slate (but for a business that has seen rapid and profitable growth), with significant experience designing and implementing back end architecture, who wants to build solutions for a mission-driven business that seeks to help millions of consumers (through the support of hundreds of thousands of real financial advisors) … then this is the job for you!
About The Role: Kitces.com is hiring a Lead Developer/System Architect to be responsible for architecting and developing the technology that underlies the Kitces.com platform (currently built on WordPress). We are preparing to rebuild our technology stack almost from the ground up (maintaining a WordPress front-end but an entirely new back-end), and require a full stack developer with significant architecturing experience. We need someone who has experience storing and retrieving datasets, building data warehouses, and setting up connections for data including APIs. While this is not necessarily a “big data” project, building for efficiency and future scalability are critical. You will be our first full time dedicated developer but will continue to work with contract developers who have experience on the platform.
We intend to build a “Kitces Member Database” (KMD) which will include information about our readers, the content they consume on site, CE programs they have taken, and trends in their usage of the platform. We will be collecting numerous types of data from various sources to create high level and detailed reports. This information will be used by our team to improve content, identify additional advisor needs, and to provide more targeted value to our readers. We want add more personalization into our customer experience.
Kitces.com is currently run on a WordPress platform with a few integrations including MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and Zapier. We plan to keep our blog on WordPress, a new system needs to be created for our members who will be taking quizzes, watching webinars, accesses documents and other resources, and taking courses. Much of the membership functionality is managed by the Memberium WordPress plugin which we intend to replace.
Description/Responsibilities
This entirely virtually-based staff position (work from anywhere, no relocation required!) will report directly to the Director of Platform &Reader Experience, and serve as the Lead Developer for the Kitces.com technology platform. A major portion of this job will involve building out databases, datasets, and integrations. This job is about building functionality for for a customer data platform (CDP) by collecting, sorting, and reporting data (but not necessarily interpreting data;a data science background is not required), and will eventually entail connecting this data to future applications we will build for our readers, and expressed in our front-end WordPress blog.
We will rely heavily on you to help us determine what technologies we should use to build this new backend. Specific languages, databases, or other software have not been settled on so this is a great opportunity to set a totally new foundation for our application.
Further description of annual responsibilities are indicated below.
– Design, architect, and implement key pieces of backend technology
– Document code, APIs uses, and other backend systems
– Evaluate and recommend tools, technologies and processes to ensure the highest quality product platform
– Coordinate with the Director of Platform for sprint planning and task prioritization
– Participate in code review, testing, and debugging with team members
– Scope out and estimate projects to help the Director of Platform manage the product roadmap
Key Candidate Traits
The ideal candidate should be self-motivated enough to work in a virtual environment with limited supervision, have a strong sense for back end implementations including data and API integrations, reasonable familiarity with various technology tools and systems and how to think through their selection, implementation, and deployment, and a strong inclination for continuous learning and data-driven iterative improvement.
The following skills will be required:
– Has built efficient data architecture, including collecting and integrating data from external sources
– Understand how business requirements link to technology requirements
– Proven experience as a software architect
– Extensive experience in software development and coding in various languages (C#, .NET, PHP)
– Knowledge of database solutions, especially SQL
– Performed API integration and implementation
– Familiarity with Linux server environments
– Experience with HTML/CSS, JavaScript and UI/UX design
– Understanding of software quality and quality assurance principles
– Be able to plan ahead and implement solutions to solve long term problems
– Able to work with and lead other developers as our development team grows over time
The ideal candidate must also exhibit highly effective written and speaking communication skills and be able to engage with a virtual team effectively. Company projects are moved forward when stakeholders come together with the spirit of collaboration. As the company continues to grow, leadership and mentorship skills will be required when additional developers are onboarded.
Experience in Agile and Scrum is preferred.
Business intelligence experience is highly preferred, but not required.
Media industry experience is preferred, but not required.
Compensation/Benefits
– Base salary $120,000 – $150,000/year based on experience
– Available bonus up to 12% of base salary, determined by meeting key Members Section and other business metrics
– $3,000 budget for additional training/skills education
– $2,000 budget for technology hardware/software or related office materials
– $3,000 conference budget
– Paid membership in the IEEE (or other similar association)
– 15 days of paid time off for combined vacation + sick, plus 6 national holidays
– Participation in company 401(k) plan
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