Who We Are
VerticalResponse, Inc is a leading provider of self-service email and direct mail solutions. We’ve been recognized as one of the top 100 best places to work in the bay area and top 100 fastest growing businesses in San Francisco (SF Biz Times) as well as one of the top 500 fastest growing businesses in the country (Inc.com). Over the past 5 years we have helped thousands of small businesses succeed with easy-to-use and affordable marketing tools and we’re looking to extend our rapid growth in 2008 and beyond.
Our Culture
“Work hard, play hard” sounds so cliché but it’s really the best way to describe VR. To say we’re passionate about helping small businesses grow is an understatement and to say we take ourselves too seriously along the way is an overstatement. Our employees thrive on challenges and we celebrate our hard-won accomplishments with a weekly libation. You will usually see us, including our CEO, in our jeans and with our nose to the stone.
What We Offer
A generous compensation package including competitive salaries, a fun place to work, and a fabulous view. We like to promote from within, so opportunities for advancement are often available as the company grows.
Openings
Marketing and Creative
- Direct Marketing Manager
- Jr. Web Print Production Artist
- Marketing Assistant
Sales
- VP of Business Development
Support
- Customer Relations Specialist
Product
- Associate Product Manager
- Product Manager
Engineering
- Email Delivery Manager
- Web Interface Developer
- Senior Ruby/LAMP Engineer
- Ruby/LAMP Engineer
- Billing Engineer
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Direct Marketing Manager
The Direct Marketing Manager role is integral to VerticalResponse’s rapidly growing marketing organization and is responsible for driving new customer acquisition through online advertising. This is a great opportunity for a proven media buyer/planner to gain broad experience across a variety of channels and help drive the most important objective of the company.
Qualifications Include:
- 3+ years of online marketing experience
- Solid understanding of Internet advertising economics and business models
- Exemplary analytic, problem-solving, and resolution skills at the tactical level
- Ability to aggregate and analyze data in order to guide decision-making and predict financial impacts (i.e, Excel guru)
- Strong communication skills including copy writing, presenting, negotiating and listening
- Always takes initiative and is able to work independently on multiple projects and tasks in a fast-paced environment
- Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to effectively operate with high energy, flexibility, and enthusiasm
- Bachelors degree from an accredited University or equivalent experience
Preferred Qualifications
- Knowledge of Marketing technology for small business products and services (email Services, CRM tools, accounting tools, surveys)
- Experience either performing lead generation or full cycle customer acquisition for a B2B Internet service
- Experience as a media buyer/planner purchasing on a direct/CPA basis
- Experience scaling customer acquisition in order to develop a multi-million dollar revenue stream
Responsibilities Include:
- Own monthly customer acquisition numbers, tracking and reporting on KPI’s across multiple marketing channels including direct marketing, affiliate programs, email, media buys, and social media programs
- Work with (and support) the Marketing Programs Managers in developing, testing, and optimizing landing pages for products; varying messaging, offers, and creative ensuring high conversion rates… test, test, test, and retest
- Identify a multitude of performance based advertising opportunities and aggressively pursue placement with these publishers, CPA networks, blogs etc. Analyze and optimize campaign performance to continually improve ROI
- Partner with creative team to develop effective marketing campaigns (messaging, banners, etc) to be leveraged across all acquisition channels
- Perform other duties as assigned
To Apply:
- Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
- Tell us why you love marketing
- Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
- Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow
- No phone calls please
This position reports to the Director of Marketing in San Francisco.
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Jr. Web Print Production Artist
Hone your design and production skills as you assist the creative marketing team to design and execute a variety of marketing communications collateral, including web graphics, email and direct mail marketing campaigns, advertisements and printed material such as brochures and trade show collateral etc.
Qualifications Include:
- Willing to collaborate with and follow direction of Senior Designer
- Knowledge of Adobe CS. (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash)
- Proficiency in HTML & CSS techniques
- Basic print produciton skills
- Comfortable working on a Mac
- Must highly organized, detail-oriented, conceptual, creative thinker who is able to, manage multiple projects to deadline, and can thrive in a fast-paced environment
- Ability to take direction and learn quickly
- Working knowledge of Flash a plus
Responsibilities Include:
To Apply:
- Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
- Send some examples of your work (require)
- Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
- Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow
- No phone calls please
This position reports to the Creative Director in San Francisco.
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Marketing Assistant
Help organize our growing marketing department while you gain hands-on marketing programs and communications experience. You are a well-presented, energetic individual who can't wait to get your hands dirty. This is a great opportunity to expand your marketing skills while working with a talented team who are serious about getting the job done and having fun doing it.
Qualifications Include:
- BA or equivalent experience
- 1-2 years experience working in a Marketing or PR department
- Self-starter with detail-oriented organizational skills
- Business copywriting skills
- Proficiency with MS Office applications including Word and Excel
- Experience using blogging, social networking, and other web2.0 applications
- Ability to take direction and learn quickly
Responsibilities Include
- Assist Marketing Manager with the VR Superstar program for customer testimonials, write case studies
- Assist Marketing Manager with follow-up email campaigns - which can range from finding the right image to writing copy
- Manage logistics around event marketing including trade shows and events, willing to travel
- Attend trade shows and training events - you're not afraid to talk with customers and think on your feet
- Monitor customer activity in the VR community and encourage discussions
- Manage lists and data enter sales leads following events and tradeshows
- Manage projects through the marketing and creative department
- Update department calendars
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
- Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
- Tell us why you love marketing
- Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
- Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow
- No phone calls please
This position reports to the Director of Marketing in San Francisco.
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VP of Business Development
This position is responsible for evangelizing VerticalResponse to generate strategic partnership and customer acquisition models. This position is a high-profile position and will report to the CEO.
Qualifications Include:
- MBA degree or equivalent experience
- 7+ years experience in an executive level business development role
- Extensive experience building business models and business cases
- Excellent sales, negotiation and deal execution skills
- Experience negotiating profitable revenue generating contracts
- Understanding of the email marketing industry and on-demand technology
- Must demonstrate ability to learn and demonstrate our product and service
Responsibilities Include:
- Architect a business development strategy for rapid market expansion and revenue generation channels
- Identify and evaluate new markets and partnership opportunities
- Research prospective partners, assess competitive landscapes, and develop financial models for customer acquisition strategies
- Develop and closely manage strategic relationships with partners to maximize long-term success and revenue generation
- Combine data, resources and market opportunity into defined strategic planning
- Coordinate with product and engineering teams to identify partner specific product enhancements that will maximize opportunities
- Work closely with marketing to ensure partner success
- Travel as needed
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
This position reports to the CEO in San Francisco.
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Customer Relations Specialist
We are looking for a calm, courteous and personable professional to join our small but growing Customer Support team. Candidates must be able to multi-task, independently troubleshoot difficult issues and maintain a focus on the helping resolve issues for our customers. This position requires a dedicated and responsible individual contributor who works well in a tight knit team environment.
Schedule will be either 11am-7 pm Monday-Friday or 6am-2pm Monday-Friday
Qualifications Include:
- BA/BS or equivalent
- Previous support experience in online support envrionment
- Competency in MS Office, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Firefox
- Comfort working with a variety of desktop applications (MS Excel in particular), internet browsers and email clients
- Knack for troubleshooting and the ability to see a task through from start to finish
- Sharp attention to detail and time management ability while multitasking
- Professional, responsive and courteous phone presence
- Cordial, patient and graceful demeanor in heated situations
- Must be an energetic "self-starter" with strong verbal, written and interpersonal skills and the ability to work independently and within a team
- Familiarity with Salesforce, LivePerson, HTML, image editing software, data manipulation and email marketing terminology helpful but not required
- Ability and desire to learn more about areas where familiarity is lacking
- Sense of humor is essential
Responsibilities Include:
- Responding promptly and thoroughly to support inquiries received via telephone, email and instant chat
- Being the first point of contact for new registrants and general inquiries
- Providing online demonstrations of our product and answering product-related questions
- Independently resolving technical/customer support issues and escalating cases when necessary
- Documenting system-wide problems and common questions posed by customers
- Providing valuable "front lines" feedback to the Product Development, Marketing and Engineering Teams
- Cultivating and expanding the FAQ/Knowledge Base used by all customers
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
- Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
- Send your proudest or most memorable support moment
- Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
- Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow
- No phone calls please
This position reports to the Customer Support Manager in San Francisco.
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Associate Product Manager
As a result of VerticalResponse’s rapid growth, and keeping in line with our long-standing commitment to providing excellent service to our customers, we’re looking for a dedicated Product Manager who will support the needs of our internal departments.
The Associate Product Manager (APM) will work closely with all members of the VR team to ensure they have the tools and resources to effectively meet the needs of our growing customer base. The APM will also provide ad-hoc support to a wide range of internal product initiatives that directly impact how we communicate with and support our valued customers.
The APM will be a champion for change and efficiency and their key focus will be to build and support products that have a direct impact on the day-to-day operations within VerticalResponse.
Qualifications Include:
- 4 to 6 years of project management or product management experience, preferably in a web-based environment
- Proven ability to gather and prioritize product requirements from key stakeholders within a fast-moving company
- Ability to multi-task efficiently, simultaneously manage multiple projects and consistently hit established deadlines
- Excellent communication, documentation and analytical skills
- Extreme attention to detail, bordering on perfectionism and/or anal retentiveness
- Ability to learn new skills quickly and absorb/process complex information “on-the-fly”
- A willingness to become a visible, vocal member of the VR team -- one who is known for making change happen
- Working knowledge of email marketing and email delivery is a significant plus
- BA/BS or higher is required
Responsibilities Include:
- Provide dedicated Product Management support to all internal departments (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, HR, etc)
- Build and upgrade business-critical tools that enhance employee productivity and efficiency
- Collect and prioritize feedback and feature requests. Translate this information into formal product requirements
- Work closely with Product, QA and Engineering teams to bring new product upgrades to life. Track usage, bug reports and overall user satisfaction
- Become the subject matter expert for all internal tools. Document the business rules and use cases for historical tracking and internal training/education
- Study the growth patterns of the company (customer growth, employee growth, etc) and proactively plan for future enhancements to key internal tools
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
- Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
- Send your proudest or most memorable PM moment
- Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
- Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow
- No phone calls please
This position reports to the VP of Product in San Francisco.
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Product Manager
The Product Management team at VerticalResponse is a lean, mean, customer-focused machine. We’re obsessed with good design, ease-of-use and cool web-based apps tailor made for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). We know there are a lot folks out there who are stuck using tools that are either over or under engineered for their needs and our mission is to build features and apps that make self-service direct marketing easy, affordable and fun (yup, we said fun).
We’re looking to add another Product Manager “rock-star” to our team – are you that person? Take a look at the specs below and see if your experience and career goals align with what we’re looking for in a PM.
Qualifications Include:
- 6+ years of dedicated project management or product management experience, preferably in a web-based environment
- Track record of managing and delivering high-quality products with an emphasis on usability and “elegant simplicity”
- Proven ability to excel in a fast-paced, lean and agile development organization
- Working knowledge or experience in the world of email marketing and/or email delivery
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences
- Extreme attention to detail, bordering on perfectionism and/or anal retentiveness
- Ability to multi-task efficiently, simultaneously manage multiple projects and consistently hit established deadlines
- Must be an energetic, adaptable "self-starter" with the ability to work independently and within a team
- BA/BS or higher is required
Responsibilities Include:
- Own individual projects and collaborate on team initiatives that drive the enhancement of our products
- Track, prioritize and act upon feedback provided by our customers as well as our Sales and Customer Support teams
- Work directly with QA and Engineering to plan, design, test, launch and track product releases
- Conduct market research and analysis to generate new product upgrade ideas uncover new niche audiences and partnerships opportunities
- Recommend and define product enhancements to increase customer retention and acquisition
- Stay current on the competitive landscape, understand key differentiators between major players in our space
- Act as the subject matter expert for the products you own and manage. Conduct training sessions, produce user guides and create/update internal documentation as needed
- Be a “champion” for our customers and a liaison for co-workers, ensuring both parties needs are consistently being met
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
- Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
- Send your proudest or most memorable PM moment
- Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
- Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow
- No phone calls please
This position reports to the VP of Product in San Francisco.
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Email Delivery Manager
By joining our industry-leading Email Delivery & Policy Enforcement Team, the Email Delivery Manager is responsible for ensuring that our customers continue to receive the highest possible delivery rates for the campaigns they create and send. The EDM is directly involved in every aspect of “email operations” at VerticalResponse and works to ensure that we remain ahead of the curve on all technical and legislative factors that may impact email delivery.
Areas of focus for the EDM include (but are not limited to): outbound campaign deployment & delivery monitoring, inbound bounce/reply processing, spam scoring/filtering and new product development.
The EDM has proven, “real-world” experience in the mass email sending/receiving space and holds expert knowledge in some or all of the following areas: email marketing, email delivery, email abuse processing or ISP Relations.
This is a technical position and candidates will need to have a solid knowledge of and real-world experience in developing, building, managing and maintaining systems that deliver large volumes of email. The extent to which this is mostly a hardcore hands-on development position will depend on the skills, background and interests of the candidates that we find.
Qualifications:
- B.S., M.S., MBA, or equivalent
- A minimum of 5 years of email-related experience
- Expert knowledge of “best practices” for email creation, sending, list building and list management
- Complete and detailed understanding of email RFCs and authentication standards such as Domain Keys, SPF and SenderID
- Advanced understanding of ISP/domain-specific delivery policies such as spam scoring heuristics, bounce handling rules and filtering logic
- Understanding of concepts such as DNS, MX records and zone delegation
- Fluent in MVC frameworks and at least one of Ruby on Rails, OO Perl or Python
- Proficient in all aspects of Unix and FOSS usage
- Thorough understanding of Apache with a mongrel cluster and/or mod_perl
- Experience with large scale 24x7x365 email operations
- Proven track record of building and maintaining strong whitelisting relationships and feedback loops with ISPs and corporate domains
- Advanced knowledge of email authentication protocols and other technological factors affecting email delivery
- Polished complaint/dispute resolution skills
- Strong understanding of the small business mailer and the challenges they face and/or bring to an ESP
- Prior experience or knowledge of 3rd party delivery and reputation services
- Excellent verbal and written communications along with the ability to communicate effectively under pressure
- Self directed and self motivated
- Experience working with open source software
- Sense if humor is essential
Responsibilities Include:
- Lead internal and external projects that maintain and enhance email deliverability – this may be in the role of lead developer or may be as subject matter expert and voice of the customer depending on the candidate’s skills and background
- Conduct competitive and market analysis to determine key delivery features/enhancements for the VR application (i.e. spam scoring, content screening, best practices recommendations)
- Expert and authoritative source for all email clients including applications (Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, AOL, Apple Mail etc), and major webmail clients (Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail,Windows Live Mail, AOL Webmail etc). Maintain a deep and up-to-date knowledge of the capability and peculiarities of these programs as it relates to email delivery and rendering
- Monitor seed accounts at major ISPs. Provide reports on aggregate deliverability rates and trends
- Monitor and report on the flow of outbound emails and incoming hard bounces, soft bounces, unsubscribes and replies
- Work with Email Delivery Specialist to identify and proactively communicate deliverability issues. Suggest and/or implement corrective actions
- Work with Email Delivery Specialist to analyze abuse and complaint rates (by customer, campaign, ISP and IP address). Take corrective action when AUP has been violated
- Manage the allocation of dedicated IP addresses and domain branding for larger customers
- Research emerging trends (legislative and technological) that may impact email marketers in general, and small business mailers specifically. Educate internal employees and our customers with relevant findings and establish VR’s recommendations for “best practices”
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
This position is located in San Francisco and will report to either the VP of Engineering or the VP of Product depending on the candidate’s background and role.
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Web Interface Developer
We are looking to add a web UI designer to our rapidly growing engineering team. Candidates for this position should have a minimum of 2 years of web UI development experience including Ruby on Rails, Prototype.js and Web Services.
The Web Interface Developer will be a member of the front-end development team and will work closely with the both the product management and engineering teams to build leading-edge dynamic and standards compliant user interfaces that can appeal to a wide spectrum of end users. The person filling this position will also work with customers and other employees to perform usability testing of various designs from concept through beta testing and to the final production release.
This is a great position for someone who is passionate about usability, making complex functionality simple and who loves to see their work being used by a large number of people.
Requirements Include:
- Proficient in Ruby on Rails framework
- Working knowledge of Prototype.js a must
- Proficient in implementing RPC-based and/or RESTful Web Services
- Ability to produce standards-compliant XHTML, CSS and JavaScript code
- Proficient in designing and implementing AJAX technologies
- Extensive background in Web Interface Design and evaluating User Experience
- Experience maintaining or following a style guide a plus
- Experience designing interface elements in Adobe Photoshop
- Familiar with a Linux development environment, RPM management a plus
- Must be an energetic "self-starter" with the ability to work independently and within a team with strong verbal, written and interpersonal skills
- Must pay attention to detail and history of meeting deadlines
- Has lots of hard-earned (and correct) ideas about how to develop web applications the right way
- Wants to learn, obsess, and teach others about cool technical stuff
- Portfolio of previous work strongly encouraged
- Sense of humor is essential
Responsibilities Include:
- Work with product management and other engineers to create consistent and compelling user interfaces
- Create interfaces to the VR RESTful and SOAP APIs
- Maintain and update the VR UI style guide
- Conduct usability testing with employees and customers
- Use subversion source control software
- Create and maintain RPM spec files in addition to building and deployment of RPMs
- Deploy software releases to QA, Staging and Production environments
- Work with the QA engineers to develop test cases and ensure that UI designs support test automation
- Share information with other employees via the company Wiki and present to the engineering team and others
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
This position reports to the VP of Engineering in San Francisco.
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Senior Ruby/LAMP Engineer
VerticalResponse is looking for a senior software developer to join our technology team. This is a high-octane, high-profile, high-paying job for someone who has the following experience:
Requirements Include:
- Fluent in LAMP and/or Ruby on Rails and MVC frameworks
- Familiar with AJAX in addition to prototype.js, script.aculo.us or rico.js framework
- Proficient in Linux system administration, GNU utilities, and RPM management
- Proficient in SQL, including experience with queries, normalized and denormalized design, stored procedures/triggers and using abstractions such as ActiveRecord
- Highly proficient in the HTTP Protocol with the ability to design and implement RESTful Web Services
- Proficient in all aspects of Unix and FOSS usage
- Proficient in using Apache with a mongrel cluster and/or mod_perl
- Experience designing and maintaining Resource/Service-oriented Architectures
- Proficient in hosted applications including networking design and technologies (switches, routers, load balancers, etc)
- Experience in developing and managing complex server systems that serve high-volume consumer sites
- Experience managing source management, software installation, and environment control (dev, qa, prod) for server applications
- Must be an energetic "self-starter" with the ability to work independently and within a team with strong verbal, written and interpersonal skills
- Must pay attention to detail and history of meeting deadlines
- Has lots of hard-earned (and correct) ideas about how to develop web applications the right way
- Wants to learn, obsess, and teach others about cool technical stuff
- Sense of humor is essential
Responsibilities Include:
- Work with product management to review functional specifications for completeness, usability and testability
- Develop new features and maintain existing code using Ruby on Rails, Perl and PHP
- Develop and maintain test cases using Ruby Test::Unit and/or JUnit
- Use subversion source control software
- Create and maintain RPM spec files and build and deploy RPMs
- Deploy software releases to QA, Staging and Production environments
- Design Databases for and tune performance of any new features that you develop
- Work with the customer service team to diagnose and respond to client issues
- Share information with other employees via the company Wiki, and present to the engineering team
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
This position reports to the VP of Engineering in San Francisco.
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Ruby/LAMP Engineer
VerticalResponse is looking for a junior software developer to join our technology team. This is a great entry-level position for an engineer with a solid education, a good understanding of UNIX and open source technologies in addition to prior web development experience:
Qualifications Include
- Familiar with LAMP, Ruby on Rails or PHP, and MVC frameworks
Familiar with AJAX in addition to one or more JavaScript frameworks such as prototype.js, script.aculo.us or rico.js
- Proficient in SQL, including experience with queries, normalized and denormalized design, stored procedures/triggers and using abstractions such as ActiveRecord
- Experience with one or more source management systems
- Must be an energetic "self-starter" with the ability to work independently and within a team with strong verbal, written and interpersonal skills
- Must pay attention to detail and be able to meet deadlines
- Wants to learn, obsess, and teach others about cool technical stuff
- Sense of humor is essential
Responsibilities Include
- Work with product management, customer service and QA to define and prioritize bug fixes and product enhancements
- Implement bug fixes and product enhancements in PHP, Ruby-on-Rails and JavaScript
- Become the engineer responsible for exposing account information to our customers outside of our application via OS X widgets, Vista Gadgets, iGoogle gadgets, FaceBook applications and other similar technologies and platforms
- Work with the customer service team to diagnose and respond to client issues including the processing of routine customer requests and tickets
- Create applications and tools to automate routine customer requests and tickets and/or create tools to allow customer service to be able to solve these issues themselves
- Develop and maintain test cases and unit tests using Ruby Test::Unit and/or JUnit
- Use subversion source control software
- Create and maintain RPM spec files and build and deploy RPMs
- Share information with other employees via the company Wiki, and present to the engineering team
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
This position reports to the VP of Engineering in San Francisco.
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Billing Engineer
With recent additions to our finance team we are looking for a full time billing engineer to provide enhanced reporting data and financial metrics to the CFO , sales and executive teams.
This position, which could be in either our San Francisco or Cambridge Massachusetts offices, involves a combination of product management, database, software development and business intelligence skills.
Requirements Include:
- Ability to work with the finance and sales teams to translate business needs into functional specifications
- Solid understanding of SQL databases – including the ability to create and understand the performance of complex queries as well as the ability to design sophisticated schemas
- At least 3 years of experience with systems engineering in a Unix/Linux environment
- Excellent analytical and communication skills and meticulous attention to detail
- Experience as lead analyst for accounting or business intelligence in an environment with tens of thousands of transactions per month
- Meaningful experience with source control and unit testing
- Web development skills using any of PHP, Ruby on Rails, HTML::Mason, or any other major web development stack
- Advanced Excel skills
- Understanding of basic accounting
- Experience with software packaging tools (RPM, apt, etc.) preferred
- Experience with RESTful or SOAP web services preferred
- Experience with accounting and/or order processing systems including QuickBooks, NetSuite, or MAS90 preferred
- Experience with Salesforce or other CRM systems preferred
- Sense of humor is essential
Responsibilities Include:
- Work with product management, finance and sales to design, specify and create financial reports and tools
- Use subversion source control software
- Create unit tests and test cases
- Create and maintain RPM spec files in addition to building and deploying RPMs
- Deploy software releases to the QA, Staging and Production environments
- Share information with other employees via the company Wiki and present to engineering, finance, sales and executive teams
- Other duties as assigned
To Apply:
This position reports to the VP of Engineering and works out of San Francisco or Cambridge, MA.
