CTO

About Programa

Programa is a Melbourne-based early-stage venture-backed startup seeking to revolutionize the interior design, architecture and furniture industry through an end-to-end SaaS-enabled marketplace. Programa makes it easier for designers to manage their projects and for suppliers to manage, promote and sell their products.

After launching our MVP in July 2020, Programa has grown quickly and we are now seeking to build the foundational team to help us deploy our product roadmap, launch eCommerce and prepare for international expansion in the near future.

About the Role

Programa is looking for an experienced and enthusiastic CTO to lead our external engineering team and work closely with our three non-technical founders. The ideal candidate for this role is a seasoned engineering leader who has experience with application software development, operations, managing a team, and infrastructure with an emphasis on SaaS and eCommerce.

As well as managing, developing and supporting external engineering staff, you'll also actively influence site level strategy and direction. Being able to set clear goals and contribute constructively to these discussions are key to ensuring your success in this position.

With non-technical founders, our CTO will be an important leader within the business and be responsible for leading Programa’s evolution from our current MVP to helping execute our product roadmap ahead of international expansion in late 2021. As such, the CTO will be required to support strategic commercial discussions and due diligence activities, requiring commercial acumen with the ability to confidently present and articulate technical solutions to a non-technical audience.

Job Requirements

The Chief Technology Officer will be the leader and manager of our development team and technology partners. They will be responsible for building and managing the team as we scale. They are in charge of all the technology aspects of the business including:

• Oversee and manage our current external development team, and prepare for gradual implementation of our own in-house team.
• Oversee our product development roadmap, including launching multi-source eCommerce and international expansion in mid-to-late 2021.
• Oversee system architecture, security, and operations.
• Ensure our stack is up to date, working, and new features are added efficiently.
• Ensure that bugs and crashes are fixed as fast as possible.
• Implement and manage our internal scrum process.
• Managing technology partnerships.
• Continuously improve and monitor the reliability of all Programa systems and services.

What You’ll Bring to the Role

Previous experience as a CTO, senior in-house developer, or software development agency, with a history of delivering high-quality products built for scale and flexibility.
Previous experience with large, multi-source eCommerce platforms including large amounts of product data.

A track record of building and managing high-performing, self-sufficient teams. This could be from hiring the right talent to mentoring & growing it internally.
Experience with large-scale SaaS architecture.

The ability to interact with individuals and leaders across different business functions.
Comfort having both architecture discussions with engineers and feature/strategy discussions with Product Managers.

Most importantly, you’ll combine your technical skills and knowledge with a competitive hunger to win, a proven ability to multitask and manage simultaneous and conflicting priorities, making decisions without knowing all the information and a strong bias for action.

What technical knowledge do you need to perform in your role?

Storage, S3 Bucket; Database, MySQL 5.7; Development, Ruby on Rails, Angular 8 (Browser Extension), JSON (Web Services); Deployment, EC2 server on AWS behind ELB; Caching, Redis Server.
Native iPhone and Android development best practices

Salary & Benefits

We are currently a small team - with big goals - and seeking someone with the personal drive, motivation, and enthusiasm to join us in growing a global business from the very beginning. As such, we’re looking for top-tier talent and have the resources (both salary & equity) to attract the right person.

Programa’s office is located in the thriving hub of Cremorne, Melbourne and close to cafes, restaurants, train stations, gyms and parks.