Director of Technology

Summary:
Our New York City based client, one of the largest and nationally recognized consumer content Websites running Drupal, is looking for a talented Director to manage and work with its development team. This team builds, maintains, and operates all hardware and software based on Drupal, PHP, MYSQL. All development is done in a Unix-based environment.

The ideal candidate will be an expert in Web based technologies and understand the business ramifications of accurate, reliable, and efficient programming. This position calls for a motivated and meticulous team leader who believes in both effective time management, realistic development timelines, scalable code, and well-documented design. This is a hands-on position that requires both active long term product and personnel development management and day-to-day programming, operational, and internal request support. The ideal candidate has experience in both agile software development and leveraging open source solutions as well as superior communication skills to successfully interact with non-technical members of our team.

Responsibilities:

• Ensure the continued uptime and capability of the Website by producing scalable, low-defect code and solutions.
• Participate in a full project life cycle environment: design, build, test, release, support, enhance.
• Manage development team work flow to meet product launch deadlines.
• Create, track, and oversee completion of various tickets for bug fixes, new product development and site operation and enhancement.
• Proactively improve and enhance the technology used by the company and Website by bringing new ideas and methods into the team.
• Manage and work with other development team members and interact with other groups at the company and parent company to define and implement new and existing products, services, and technology.
• Support the editors and writers in using the tools created to manage site content.
• Integrate third-party tools and data feeds.
• Support various corporate units in defining and implementing project requirements, definitions, and goals.

Requirements:

• Fluent in all of the following technologies: Drupal, PHP, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, XML, SQL, MYSQL, subversion, memcache, and Shell Scripting.
• Extensive experience creating and modifying Drupal modules.
• Strong Unix user and developer skills.
• Experience developing for high traffic Web sites, with millions of visitors each month. Content site experience preferred.
• Able to read and modify code written in other programming languages.
• Strong knowledge of SQL queries and relational database concepts in MYSQL.
• Solid knowledge of TCP protocols and communication techniques.
• Experience diagnosing and solving performance bottlenecks and root causes.
• Experience working with load balanced Web Servers and shared storage.
• Highly adaptive and a promoter of change.
• Dedicated to meeting and delivering on business objectives.
• Experience managing developers and projects, especially when the development team is remote.
• Strong communication and management skills in multiple mediums (email, IM, IRC, Skype, face-to-face).
• Strong problem solving abilities.
• Able to calmly handle production issues and unforeseen operational difficulties.

Compensation: Competitive salary commensurate with demonstrated ability and experience.