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)

Interview: Melbourne local, Steven Farlie of OpenTechSchool — January 22, 2013

Interview: Melbourne local, Steven Farlie of OpenTechSchool

This week, we chat to Steven Farlie – the person bringing OpenTechSchool in Australia after he was across the initiative in Berlin. The workshops supporting education and sharing across diverse backgrounds in technology are kicking off in Melbourne next month. Stay tuned for more event announcements in upcoming Fetches and we’ll see you there!

steven

What is OpenTechSchool and how does it differ from user groups, dev bootcamps and the like?

We are a group of volunteers who offer free programming workshops. It began in Berlin back in April 2012, so we are still fairly new. Some of us became quite fond of OpenTechSchool in Berlin and decided to start up local chapters once we left.

Our workshops are fairly small and we like to bring a lot of coaches who are themselves professional programmers. There is only so much you can teach in a couple of hours so we like to keep it practical, keep it fun and encourage people to experiment.

It’s all open technology, and free of charge, so why not just have some fun and poke around?

In addition to the workshops we have a regular beginner meetup. These are usually evenings where we have a couple of talks such as introductions to algorithms or programmers talking about how they started programming. Beginners also share their experiences over the past few months with a particular language or personal project.

You started out with clear positioning saying OTS was for women? What prompted you to change the language?

We started after the first RailsGirls Berlin workshop, so OpenTechSchool is from the women in tech movement but isn’t specifically women in tech, if that makes any sense. We like to think of ourselves as complementary to organisations like Rails Girls and Girl Geek Dinners. There is a strong cross-pollination of coaches and organisers and we hope to keep that going over time. The fact of the matter is that the women in tech scene is the most fun, vibrant and exciting community in technology right now and OpenTechSchool wants to bring that to everyone.

picAn OpenTechSchool session in Berlin

Why do you think it’s important the wider popular and diverse groups learn to code?

The issue of empowerment is often overlooked and yet so much of our lives are controlled by technology. When someone learns how to program then they start to experience technology in a much more informed way. Possibilities open up and people are able to solve problems that programmers haven’t even considered. From farmers managing their crops with Android apps to journalists crunching data with Python you can actually get a lot done without having to be a professional programmer.

One the other side, bringing in a diverse group of beginners actually strengthens the community. Many of the things we do as professional programmers are actually dictated by history or convention, often with detrimental results. Beginners ask the right questions and call us out on doing stupid things that we’ve always put up with before. The end result is that our original assumptions get challenged and a lot of really good ideas come out.

You started out of Berlin – have you noticed many differences between Melbourne and it? Where else is OTS headed?

After Berlin I will never complain about the weather in Melbourne ever again!

Of all the places I’ve been in Europe I found Berlin to be the most Melbourne-like. Both are multicultural, dynamic cities with a lot of new things happening all the time. It’s interesting that there are so many analogues between the two, even in the tech scene. Berlin coworking spaces usually have a spiritual equivalent in Melbourne, though the Berlin ones can be quite large. We both have interesting startups and well established larger tech companies. I say to people if you love Melbourne you’ll also love Berlin.

We’ve been a bit lucky, starting in Berlin. There are so many expats and temporary visitors that movements like OpenTechSchool can spread very quickly. We have plenty of Germans, French, Americans, Australians and Italians on the team, and when people do leave they have a tendency to take OpenTechSchool with them. Stockholm is quite well established now, having hosted several workshops and beginner meetups. Soon we hope to also be in Munich and Paris. We even made a blueprint guide on our website for people wanting to start an OpenTechSchool chapter in their city.

What can attendees expect on the day? What tech knowledge do they need to know beforehand?

All we ask is for people to bring a laptop and a smile. Our beginner workshop does not require any programming knowledge at all. Our coaches are there to help people with any problems that they have. We design our workshops to be at your own pace, so there is no such thing as “being behind”. We try to get a basic level of coursework that most people will finish before the end and then add extra topics for people to explore. All our coursework is free and available online after the course, and all software we use is free so you can continue the journey after the workshop has finished.

What upcoming events should we keep a look out for?

After the beginner Python workshop, well, maybe I shouldn’t say, but… things might get a little political! The past few years have seen a rise in data-driven journalism and some people have expressed interest in seeing what actually goes on behind the scenes. In case you haven’t heard, data journalism is the new punk. If enough interest is there we might do a workshop looking at things like transforming economic and political data into infographics and maps.

Check out the first event with an Intro to Python here!

For a great round-up of upcoming programming events and news from OpenTechSchool plus other related goodness, subscribe our free email digests via The Fetch.

About our Curator // Kate Kendall is the founder and CEO of The Fetch, a community where professionals can discover and share what’s happening in their city. Before this, Kate led product, content and digital at magazine companies, handled outreach for new startups and organised too many communities and events to mention. Follow her on Twitter at @katekendall.

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