Our client is a founding-stage startup in the travel media content space. Spinning off from a very successful company offering corporate travel and concierge services, this new company will be designed to be a web- and mobile-based personal tour guide, so users who are traveling will get real-time updates about events, videos of sights to see, the ability to purchase tickets for museums or shows, and even access to a local expert for any special needs or requests, all delivered through their phone or iPad. It’s a game-changer for the travel business.

This will be a B2B2C play, with the intention of selling the software to companies who will offer it as a white-labeled value-added service for their end customers.

The founding board is a team of very successful leaders with the track record, connections and resources to make this company succeed at a very fast pace. They are clear with their objectives, are already in conversation with some fantastic beta customers, and are now looking to hire the first key management roles: a CEO and a VP of Engineering.

As VP of Engineering, you will be tasked with architecting and overseeing development of a web- and mobile-based product from the ground up. It will need to be highly scalable, cloud-based and use standard open systems, protocols and approaches.  It must be easily customizable for white label clients such as credit card companies, financial services companies, the hospitality industry, and major corporations offering value-added services to their employees.

We are looking for:

•    A successful outcome building and shipping a Web 2.0 consumer-facing product from the ground up, ideally in the B2B2C space.
•    A product visionary with the ability to architect an elegant and scalable cloud-based product.
•    Verifiable success in a pure startup company.
•    A confident and articulate executive who can make presentations and evangelize the product to the media.
•    A true leader with the hands-on skills for a startup, and the vision for a fast-growing company.
•    Strong empathy and understanding of customers and the impact of how the product will be used.
•    Experience with deploying and managing offshore developers and building outsourced engineering teams.
•    It would be great to have experience in the travel space, and have brand-name companies on your resume.

The company is in the Bay Area, but for this position, you might be anywhere, as long as you can manage things virtually, and are willing to come to the headquarters once a month.

The company is in a pre-funded stage, and so we are looking for someone whose past success allows them to take on this job for additional equity in lieu of salary until larger funding is received (the quality of your past track record will accelerate that event), at which time compensation will be at a competitive rate for startups, with generous equity as well.

If this sounds like the situation you’ve been looking for, and you have the engineering leadership track record we’re looking for, please send your resume to us at leslie@peopleconnectstaffing.com.