Location: New York, NY
URL: www.topps.com
Topps Digital, a new division of The Topps Company, Inc., is looking for a technology leader to help us fundamentally change the way we experience and interact with sports.
Topps Digital, a new division of The Topps Company, Inc., is looking for a technology leader to help us fundamentally change the way we experience and interact with sports.
As the Director of App Engineering, you will immediately take control of two iOS sports apps currently in stealth mode, launching April 2012.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
· A tech leader. You can recruit and lead a team of designers, developers, system admins, and DBAs. You can attract talent. You can motivate and inspire. You can produce results by getting your team to go above and beyond what was thought possible. You set and maintain a high quality bar.
· An engineer. You are a General as well as a Foot Soldier. You don’t mind getting into the trenches, managing backlogs, reviewing code, assigning tasks, validating test cases, and crafting elegant technical solutions. You see the big picture and can drive the team, but relish the opportunity to get your hands dirty.
· A triple threat. Or a quadruple threat. Or we’ll just call it a multi-disciplinarian. You are comfortable with all technical aspects of building and running multiple large-scale Internet services, including system architecture, development, testing, hosting, administration, and operations.
· Experience with some of the following technologies; Objective-C, Cocoa, OpenGL, C++, Python, EC2, and mongoDB or Xeround or Amazon RDS.
· An (unsatisfied) lover of sports. You know and love sports. You are as deft with last night’s results as you are with the story of Dock Ellis. But you are also unsatisfied with the traditional sports media experience from ESPN and feel it hasn’t kept pace with innovation in the tech space. You want to do for sports what turntable.fm is doing for music.
· An interest in infographics. Sports, especially baseball, are replete with data. What does the back of a baseball card look like in the modern age? How does one explore and interact with this data? You are inquisitive, curious, and interested in visualizing data and building experiences around it.
· A confident leader during transition. You can take the reins of two on-going iOS projects, oversee two external development teams, and ease the transition from outsourced to in-housed development. Building a high performance team with mobile chops is job # 1.
WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING
· Overseeing the design, development, launch, and future iterations of two iOS baseball applications
· Hiring and managing a team of developers
· Communicating with designers, illustrators, product managers, third-party data providers, and executive management on product roadmap
· Thinking about the future. We need our apps to be cross-platform and we need to be able to franchise our apps to many sports, like football, soccer, and cricket
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
· 8+ years work experience in related positions with increasing responsibility
· 4+ years of work experience in mass market consumer electronics / software / wireless / Internet product management
· 3+ years leading teams
· Experience managing multi-functional teams of at least 5 individuals
· Experience identifying and hiring world-class talent.
· Experience mentoring and coaching others to improved performance
· BA/BS required
WHAT IS TOPPS DIGITAL
Topps Digital is a new division at the iconic American sports and confectionery company, Topps. Think The New York Times Digital Division in 1995. We are responsible for nothing short of reimagining the Topps brand across web, social, and mobile, including the design and development of new standalone digital products, the development and distribution of online content, and the sales of physical and digital products online. In the process, we will reinvent the company and make a considerable dent in the global sports media landscape.
We are a start-up within an established company located in lower Manhattan. But unlike a start-up, we have two things going for us:
· An iconic brand that will help your product reach millions of potential users, and
· Relationships with leagues, players associations, and teams giving you access to marks, content, and other important assets that add value and legitimacy to your apps
THE TOPPS DIGITAL PHILOSOPHY
Product
· Sports are important in our lives; they have the capacity to create overwhelming joy and uncontrollable despair
· Sports fans are intelligent and sophisticated, but they need to feel as much as they think
· Users make our product; they give us feedback, they contribute content, and satisfying them is why we wake up every morning
· Product will be built first intuitively, then based more and more on user data
· Product should first be envisioned as a final experience and then reverse-engineered to make it happen technically
Culture
· Stay open, honest, and respectful; seek out other opinions and ideas and engage in healthy debates
· Never lose your curiosity around why we do things and how things work
· Be yourself
To apply: Send Cover Letter and Resume to: Attn: Human Resources - Annette Alvarado aalvarado@topps.com
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