The Fetch Blog

Curated reads and events for professionals

Featured job: full-stack software engineer, Thread, London — March 11, 2014

Featured job: full-stack software engineer, Thread, London

thread

Hi! We’d like to introduce Thread – a company reinventing retail so guys can dress well without being subjected to the horrors of high street shopping, or having to trawl through millions of items online.

They do this by using a clever combination of algorithms and human stylists to give guys the perfect selection of things that will look amazing on them. Their goal is to create the new global default for how men buy clothes.

They’re live, have lots of customers who absolutely love the product, and revenues are growing very quickly. [Job application details are down below!]

Building one of the best engineering teams worldwide

One of their ancillary goals is to build one of the best engineering teams and cultures anywhere in the world. This means putting a lot of time into ensuring they only hire truly exceptional developers and creating the best working environment possible.

They’re lucky to already have a number of exceptional developers on the team which you’ll get to work alongside, learn from and no doubt teach. For example, their co-founder/CTO was formerly a lead engineer at Google, their technical architect is a core Debian developer, etc. If you want to work somewhere where you will be learning from some of the best engineers around, this role would be a good fit.

You’ll work everyday with an awesome technology stack consisting of Python, Django, Git, Debian, Redis, jQuery, Jenkins, Postgresql, Gunicorn and many other things.

They place a high value on learning and personal growth so you’ll have time to learn new technologies and attend conferences at the company’s expense. They also host a bi-monthly meetup at their offices for engineers interested in startups called Many to Many.

Beyond this, you will get the chance to demonstrate your deep technical ability by tackling some hard technical challenges including recommendation algorithms and machine learning. They release 20-30 times per week (just push to master) so your cool new features will be live on the site within moments.

Not your average software engineering role

As employee number 12 and engineer number 4, you’ll work directly with the founders and the rest of the outstanding technical, design, product and styling team in the office in Shoreditch, London to build the core features that will improve people’s wardrobes and in turn their self-confidence and happiness.

You won’t merely be handed specs: you’ll be in charge of taking ideas from the whiteboard all the way through to them being live, tracking the results, and iterating to make them better. For this reason, this role is only suitable for someone who likes being closely involved in product – what to build and how it will work as much as the technical implementation itself.

Beyond your engineering team mates, you’ll be working closely with a cross-discipline group of designers, quantitative marketers, operations and stylists. You should love the idea of the whole company working closely together to hit shared goals.

This role is especially suited to someone who wants to found their own startup one day. All our current team are future founders and they view working there as an entrepreneurial bootcamp that will give you the necessary skills and experience to launch your own company in the future.

Are you the one? You are, if you:

  • Love agile development, working independently on your own challenges, and together in a team on the bigger vision
  • Are completely fluent in at least one scripting language such as Python, Perl, PHP or Ruby and have experience with web frameworks and the MVC concept
  • Have used MySQL or PostgreSQL extensively and you know your way around Apache, nginx or other server
  • It’s a bonus if you have good JavaScript skills (we use jQuery)
  • Get excited by the idea of scaling web apps to millions of users
  • Often find yourself as the best developer in your peer group, and want to be at a place with other exceptional engineers where you can learn and grow as a person
  • Get obsessed about the problem you’re solving and don’t stop until you’ve cracked it
  • Have a thirst to learn new skills and technologies, and can pick things up easily
  • Want to have fun building lots of new features and get stuff done
  • Are full of positive energy, relish the thought of being part of a small, fast-moving team and enjoy brainstorming about new ideas

Benefits

  • Opportunity to become recognised as one of the best in your field through being a core developer for a high-profile startup
  • Relaxed, sociable work environment with lots of freedom and independence
  • Building an exciting app that millions of people will use and appreciate everyday
  • Gain first-hand experience of how to start, grow, market and raise funding for startups (perhaps useful for your own company one day)
  • Working with awesome technologies (Python/Django/jQuery/Debian/Git/Redis/Jenkins/Postgresql/Gunicorn)
  • As part of one of the top technical teams in the UK, alongside super smart people who have a lot of fun, devoid of any politics
  • With dual-widescreen monitors, a new computer of your choice and and comfy ergonomic chair
  • Free team lunches once a week (we take turns choosing), beer together as a company on Fridays, monthly company trips to fun things like comedy shows, unlimited vacation time.
  • Being part of a company where you will get to help set and shape the company culture in a big way
  • A competitive salary and a generous equity stake in the company (you’re working hard to make the company successful, so we believe you should share generously in the reward!)

A little more about Thread:

  • Backed by some of the top investors anywhere in the world, including the founders of LoveFilm, Wonga and Bebo, the former owner of Warner Music, the former head of Harrods, founding investor in Spotify, Y Combinator, and many others.
  • Founded by serial entrepreneurs who have started two successful startups which both exited.
  • They’re very deliberate and intentional about creating a high performance, warm and effective company culture. They set weekly goals together as a team, and celebrate every Friday with a fun shared treat if they all hit them. Lots of thought has gone into the working environment they’ve created – please ask them about this if you meet!
  • Lastly, they’re not just some social app hoping to go viral and make money from ads – they’re already generating real revenue which are growing very quickly.

If this sounds exciting and you’d like to have an informal chat, send an email to ben@thread.com with a few sentences about yourself, your resume and links to your Github/LinkedIn/site/etc.

Image credit: Thread.com (follow them on Twitter and Facebook)

8 places to find a startup job in Australia — September 29, 2013

8 places to find a startup job in Australia

jobs

Finding a new job or info on how to join an upcoming startup in Australia can be difficult as there’s no one place to discover opportunities. Luckily, we’ve listed a few places below to kick-off your search.

The Australian startup community has really grown in the past few years – in fact nearly all of the coworking spaces, accelerators and meetups you see today didn’t exist pre-2011. (We remember heading along to Silicon Beach Drinks when there were just five people there!) Funding has also come on a lot but most startups are still poorly resourced or slowly bootstrapping so employment opportunities (well, the paid kind) are limited.

Many US companies are now going international and localising city-by-city in Australia. Uber, Etsy, Yammer, Yelp, oDesk, Airbnb, General Assembly, Stripe and Twitter have all recently set-up shop here and are often looking for talent. However, if you are making the shift from corporate to startup, we recommended getting a solid taste of startup life and going in at the early-stage. This way, you can make a bigger impact, have more responsibility and grow with the company (or see it fail, which is arguably a better experience to have).

One of the downsides of taking a startup job in Australia is that company regulations and structure often means it’s harder to allocate stock to employees. Some startups here won’t even put equity on the table. Salaries can also vary from being globally competitive to barely offering a living wage. The other elephant in the room is the visa situation – Australia can be strict so you’ll need to research the best pathway for you.

With all this in mind, check out our handy guide on how to discover startup jobs in Oz:

1) The Silicon Beach Jobs Board

This is a community-led initiative and is the most specific site for startup jobs in Oz. It has lots of promise but unfortunately doesn’t get updated too much. Often Sydney-centric, there are full-time, part-time and casual opps on offer. Don’t forget to check out the Google Group for jobs posted directly there too.

2) City-specific mailing lists

Many community groups and meetup organisers maintain a mailing list for announcements to their communities. In these (somewhat sporadic) updates, they regularly include new roles. Lean Startup Melbourne, Silicon Beach Drinks and Fishburners are some examples.

3) Accelerators

Accelerators can be the breeding ground of startups that are looking for funding. Startmate, AngelCube and BlueChilli are a few suggestions in Australia to look out for – check out the companies in each batch and ping some of the founders with an intro and your background. When the time is right to scale their team, you’ll have already built a relationship with them. Check out a full list of more incubators and accelerators here.

4) VC firms

Similar to the above, contacting venture capital firms directly and asking if their portfolio companies have any jobs going can be effective. This is also key for senior hires and if you’re thinking about moving countries, since VCs are dealing with the most well-funded tech startups in Australia. Southern Cross, Starfish, Blackbird Ventures and the local angel networks are worth checking out.

5) AngelList

AngelList is the best site to search for startup jobs in the US. It’s also doing nicely in Australia. The key is using the filters to refine your search by location. Even if startups aren’t hiring, here’ll you’ll find a good signal of who’s strong in each city. For instance https://angel.co/melbourne will deliver you a ranked list in Melbourne.

6) LinkedIn

LinkedIn is still an odd mix in Australia in that you’ll have some solid roles advertised here but it’s not that comprehensive. SEEK is still the leading job board but it’s become very noisy and rather broken in referring amazing talent. Actively search for jobs on  LinkedIn but also follow companies to get their news and openings in your news feed.

7) Offline 

There’s nothing like word of mouth for getting your next job. Here’s a great article on the power of weak ties in your network. But where to start? Check out many of the local events and coworking spaces to get out there and start meeting people. If you’re not yet on the ground, do some research and then start reaching out to people via Twitter and email.

“Jobs that people heard about via personal contacts were best of all. But when people got these word-of-mouth jobs, they most often came via a weak tie.”

8) The Fetch

And, of course, if you want all of the above curated in one weekly email digest, sign up to The Fetch – you can also submit your roles to us via email (contact details.) 🙂

So, where else do you recommend?

Image credit: Kasia Kaczmarek

About our contributor // Kate Kendall is the founder and CEO of The Fetch. She regularly blogs about startup life and helps businesses understand the role of community. Follow her on Twitter via @katekendall

15 places to find a startup job in London — July 20, 2013

15 places to find a startup job in London

ldnbus

Breaking into the London startup scene and getting your first job can be hard – especially if you are moving from a corporate role or you’re a recent university graduate.

Although, there are no shortage of networking events happening around Silicon Roundabout, we wanted to put together a comprehensive list of job boards specifically listing startup tech roles.

For the larger tech companies, Linkedin is a great resource – especially for getting those important introductions – however the sites below are also a great place to start.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my Top 15 Startup Job Boards for London roles:

1. Google Campus London is a great place to start looking for fresh startup roles and tech and dev jobs.

2. 3beards Jobs Board is the one stop shop for all tech related jobs going in Tech City at the moment.

3. Work in Startups lists startup roles including technical, marketing, intern and co-founder listings.

4. EscTheCity is a website for those who want to escape the corporate rat race and explore all types of opportunities such as working for a startup, volunteer work and anything else in between.

5. Tech City Jobs is powered by TechHub and JobsPage. Regular listings for dev & tech jobs around Silicon Roundabout.

6. Built in London comes from the team at Steer, who have put together all jobs available at startups based in London.

7. Mind The Product includes exclusive listings for product management roles.

8. Hacker Jobs UK lists only technical and development roles.

9. Upstart Jobs posts all types of startup roles from developers, marketing and sales vacancies.

10. UK Startup Jobs has a variety of listings from technical roles, to sales and biz dev to marketing roles.

11. JobPage is a crowd sourced job network and feature listings for all types of roles from sales assistants, to managers and account executives at an agency. But since they are startup themselves check back here for any related tech and startup roles.

12. Mars Jobs was born in Berlin, but has recently started to list startup jobs based in London.

13. Online Community Manager Jobs is the place to look for social media and community management roles.

14. Chinwag Jobs Board is a great resource for all digital, social media, web design, ecommerce, UX and technical roles.

15. Gorkana lists online journalism, social media and editorial and PR jobs.

16. Somewhere Hq London added by @Josef 

17. F6s Jobs added by @ParallelBrains

18. Careers 2.0 UK added by @ParallelBrains

19. Dreakstake added by @carlosdajackal

20. Foundee added by @carlosdajackal

21. Enternships added by @NatashaHodgson @isoworg

Which sites do you use to look for startup jobs? Please add your suggestions in the comments section below or tweet us @thefetchLDN and we’ll add to it.

And don’t forget to sign-up to The Fetch to get the above curated into one weekly email digest.

About our contributor // Chloe Nicholls is the editor and chief content strategist at PublicBeta, video producer at Newspepper.com and the curator of The Fetch London.

Image Credit: Helena Carrington

Job: Web Creative Lead, The University of Melbourne — June 24, 2013

Job: Web Creative Lead, The University of Melbourne

This is a cool new opportunity based in Melbourne to work at one of Australia’s leading and most innovative universities – The University of Melbourne (it’s also our old undergrad stopping ground)!

unimelb-logo

The team is looking for a Web Design Lead to help guide the Web Marketing team and our internal clients through the design process. You will be responsible for blending University and user goals to create high quality online experiences across a diverse range of devices.

Your work will be viewed millions of times each month so it has to look and work excellently. The Web Design Lead will also help steer content and campaign strategy, pitch new ideas and establish success metrics for projects. A multi-disciplinary role, the Web Design Lead will be responsible for designing and developing attractive, functional interfaces and interactions using a combination of professional skill, intuition and testing.

The role requires leading the design, usability and testing aspects of all future and existing web properties (key University web properties include the University homepage, Course Search and University Events Calendar. The role also requires conceptualising improvements to the overall web presence at large and working with others to make iterative improvements.

Salary: AUD$102,323 – AUD$106,459 p.a. plus 17% superannuation

Employment Type: Full-time (continuing) position
Enquiries only to: Paul Tagell Tel +61 3 8344 3874 and email ptagell@unimelb.edu.au
Close date: 14 July 2013

For position information and to apply online go to www.hr.unimelb.edu.au/careers, click on ‘Search for Jobs’ and search under the job title or job number 0031307.

Event Review: How to Land a Job at a Startup — August 5, 2012

Event Review: How to Land a Job at a Startup

This event review of “How to land a job at a startup” is brought to you by Solange Francois, from our Fetch Community Ambassador Team in Sydney.

On Thursday, 26th July I attended General Assembly’s ‘How to Land a Job at a Startup’. It was an hour of ideas led by Riley Batchelor, who has been involved with startups for many years before deciding to use his skills and contacts for educating and mentoring.

What types of startup jobs are out there?

The majority of tech startup roles are, unsurprisingly, developer roles, but there are also requirements for sales, business development, marketing, commercial management, operations, admin and more.

What are the benefits of working at a startup?

Startups don’t operate like large, established companies. Startups generally offer flexibility in attire and work hours and autonomy that comes from a smaller, flatter management structure. Startups often work in co-working spaces so staff interact with a wide range of enthusiastic, ambitious entrepreneurs.

How can I make it happen?

  • Get your story straight – work out what you want to do and focus on a core skill
  • Make connections rather than rely on job boards – network and ask for introductions
  • Demonstrate your passion – know the company and become familiar with the product and space
  • Differentiate yourself – stand out, be creative and get noticed
  • Know your place – envision the role you’d play in the business and deliver that value before being asked
  • At interviews, share fresh ideas and demo your work
  • Consider up-skilling in areas you’re not familiar with so you’re able to offer a broader skill set
  • Investigate various sources, for example, connections, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook pages, The Fetch, Silicon Beach Australia board

The opportunities for people driven to become involved in this space continue to grow, but it’s not a conventional recruitment path so it’s up to the individual to take the lead, up-skill and get connected.

About our Ambassador // This article was contributed by Community Ambassador Solange Francois. She is a marketer and lover of travel with a passion for psychology and lifelong learning. You can connect with Solange through her blog or on Twitter @solangefrancois

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