Job opening - Relay Graduate School of Education: Director of Application Development

Location: New York, NY
URL: http://www.relayschool.org

GENERAL SUMMARY

Relay Graduate School of Education [“Relay”], recently licensed by New York State and formerly known as Teacher U, is a new, independent graduate school with a ground-breaking master’s degree program designed specifically to respond to today’s demand for effective teachers. 

Relay’s master’s program is the first-ever to require its graduate students to demonstrate proficiency and achievement while teaching in their K-12 classrooms to earn a degree.  Relay is positioned to bring about transformational change in teacher preparation, becoming the place where a new generation of continuously improving, results-focused individuals can fulfill their destiny in the world’s greatest profession.

 

As Relay grows, it will deliver an increasing variety of software that will enable, complement, and support the school’s instructional experience.  Relay’s Director of Application Development will be primarily responsible for realizing these applications, building a suite of state-of-the-art software products that will be showcase capabilities for the organization.  In short, this is an exciting opportunity to play an integral role in urban, public education reform by shaping the experience for a leading edge graduate school. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own primary responsibility for all software development for Relay, which includes fully custom applications (e.g. tablets, automated rubrics, data trackers, analytics), adaptations of existing software (e.g. learning management system), and custom additions/enhancements to existing software (e.g. public website, student information system);
• Shape, in conjunction with the Chief Information Officer, Relay’s approach to software development and data integration for web browsers, tablets, and mobile devices;
• Ensure, in conjunction with product managers, that Relay’s applications are maximally intuitive, are visually and experientially consistent, and encourage our students, professors, and staff to be excited evangelists for Relay;
• Build high quality, bug-free software that exceeds the requirements of Relay’s users;
• Manage and coach application developers and consultants;
• Ensure maintainability, re-usability, scalability, extensibility, integration, and performance of Relay’s code base by providing technical architecture guidance to application developers and consultants and by defining and enforcing coding standards;
• Maintain up-to-date project plans for Relay’s existing applications and develop specific estimates for Relay’s senior managers regarding delivery dates, costs, and capabilities for new applications;
• Coordinate with application developers, product managers, and consultants to maintain a complete inventory of requirements and enhancement requests for Relay’s applications;
• Define and manage, in conjunction with product managers, the processes for collecting and prioritizing application development requests and for sharing the status of application development projects with Relay’s leadership team, application developers, and end users; and
• Coordinate with Relay’s Quality Assurance team to ensure code quality and timeliness.

 

QUALIFICATIONS

First and foremost, the Director of Application Development must share the team’s sense of urgency about the need to improve student achievement through phenomenal teacher training.  Additionally, candidates for the position must have the following:

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field
• At least five years of relevant professional experience, including at least three years of experience leading and mentoring software development teams
• Demonstrated success defining and launching excellent products
• Experience with both Agile and waterfall planning
• Experience with the LAMP stack, ideally in a virtualized environment â€" additional experience with Amazon Web Services (i.e. EC2, RDS, Elastic Beanstalk, S3, CloudFront) is a plus
• Experience developing in PHP and MySQL using server-side MVC frameworks (e.g. Symfony) â€" additional experience with client-side frameworks (e.g. jQuery, Blueprint, Cappuccino, SproutCore) is a plus
• Strong customer service orientation, team orientation, and collaborative nature
• Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority
• Attention to detail as well as proven organizational skills
• Ability to work efficiently, intensely, and within an entrepreneurial environment
• A demonstrated passion for urban education and closing the achievement gap
• A high level of zest, grit, hope, gratitude, and humor.

 

COMPENSATION

Relay offers a competitive salary and benefits package.

Relay Graduate School of Education provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees.

To apply: Interested individuals should apply online at http://www.relayschool.org/immediate-opportunities/

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