Ning Jobs

Opportunity

• Lead the platform development team in evolving the Ning Platform, the first online platform that supports arbitrary code execution inside our own backend.
• Ensure the Ning Platform remains innovative and competitive, an environment that captures the imagination of developers and Network Creators.

Responsibilities

• Balance Ning’s rapid growth with the continual introduction of new platform APIs.
• Recruit, hire, and manage the best platform development team possible. Ensure being a member of the platform development organization is as rewarding a professional experience as possible.
• Hold platform development team to precise, well-communicated deadlines, milestones, and results. Deliver by example.
• Facilitate rapid and detailed communication up, across, and down the entire company on platform development decisions, priorities, and feedback into both the platform and the “killer app” – your own social network for anything. Communicate by example.
• Ensure communication of clear strategy, goals, priorities, and schedules to the platform development team.
• Successfully navigate the big picture and the smallest details simultaneously.
• Participate in strategy and, at the same time, obsess over how we’re managing outstanding platform issues in Jira, our bug tracking system.
• Instill rapid, precise communication and decision making into the platform development culture at Ning.

Requirements

• Leader who loves to ship products. Ability to inspire not only engineers but everyone towards big, aggressive common goals.
• Demonstrated understanding and experience with the challenges and opportunities of a platform approach.
• Demonstrated experience leading platform engineering teams to deliver results in the most autonomous, empowered way possible. Loves to manage and grow talent.
• Has worked on products we respect. This is the best way for us to jointly determine upfront a consistent view of the world.
• Expert in modern web technologies – Java 5 and 6, PHP, HTML, Javascript, REST, etc. – yet have experience developing in C/C++ or Java. Even better, you have opinions about all of them.
• Because of your love of shipping products, you are a natural at recruiting and motivating engineers who want to do the same.
• Demonstrated ability and comfort working with founders and executives with strong product vision and ideas.
• Experience with consumer internet services a must. We want someone who has direct experience with the rewards and demands of a consumer internet start-up or product team within a larger company during its hyper-growth phase.
• Passion for connecting with developers and gathering feedback on products for which they are responsible. Ideally has a blog or product feedback channel they manage and where we can see his or her external interactions with developers.
• Demonstrated experience of a strong technical foundation combined with driving creativity and innovation in platform decisions.
• Excels personally at defining complex features on very tight deadlines.
• Not afraid to work hard in exchange for a phenomenal experience.

Can demonstrate during the interview process

• Curiosity. Creates a social network. Brings great questions, especially technical ones, to the interview process.
• Product instincts consistent with our own.
• Attention to the right details.
• Ability to listen and change course based on feedback and new information.
• Enough of a technical foundation to keep up with technical limitations or constraints.
• Ability to make crisp, clear decisions.