Monday, September 10, 2007



We are now recruiting for the following role at Naked - pls get in touch if you know anyone that might be appropriate...



Role: Software Engineering & Infrastructure Lead
Company: Naked Ltd
Direct Reports: 2-4 (Year 1)
Salary: Competitive + Equity + Options + Health
Based: London, UK


Who is Naked?
Naked Ltd is a London based start-up company with a core team of 7. Naked is properly funded and is finalising its next financing round to support the scope of its ambition to grow into a global community within 5 years.

Being Naked
Naked is a state of mind as well as a service offering. Being Naked is being close to the people you care about, individually or as a group, by being true to yourself through genuinely open and transparent communication. This closeness is unique and special for each individual, and exists between their chosen groups of family members, friends and aquaintances – their ‘world of we’.

Open Messaging
Naked is a new open messaging service that addresses people’s desire for closeness between friends, family and acquaintances. Naked enables people to share idle thoughts, profound comments, feelings, experiences, through short-form lightweight mixed-media posts. Unlike conversational systems like instant messaging, the resulting stream is both ephemeral and permanent, and is automatically shared in online spaces dedicated to each individual and the specific people and groups they want to be close with. Posting to and accessing these streams can be done through multiple channels (web, mobile, IM, email, RSS) enabling ongoing and ‘anytime’ sharing.

Platform Approach
- Open
Naked adopts an open approach to platform, architecture and member data. 3rd party platform API’s ensure open access to developers and other web services while an open architecture means support for industry efforts to converge messaging across services, channels and networks, through standards bodies and API’s. And open member data recognises that our members own their personal information and should control when, what and where this data is shared with others.

- Channel Agnostic
Naked is designed to work across devices, enabling anytime and anywhere messaging on a pc or mobile, via the web, im, email and rss. Availability of open API’s and web services ensures that as the service evolves, others can compliment the channel spectrum with whats new and needed.

- Rapid & Agile
A development methodology that recognises our members as co-developers, incorporating feedback in to regular rolling release cycles that spur the evolution of the service and its social application.

Who are we looking for?
Naked is seeking a Software Engineering and Infrastructure Lead to recruit and lead a small, close-knit team of exceptional IT talent. You need to be an exceptional coder, collaborator, inventor, architect, leader and mentor, all rolled into one. You like working in a fast-paced and engineering-driven environment and you love envisioning projects, motivating a team of engineers and are happy to roll your sleeves up to implement critical components yourself.

You will be responsible for all software and infrastructure related projects, including those that are managed in house and externally in collaboration with 3rd party development partners. You will need to direct your team efficiently across projects and govern the technical roadmap for Naked. You will manage the ongoing scaling of the application environment and the associated infrastructure requirements and costs.
You will need to play a stakeholder role in all related industry activities while leading the implementation of supporting initiatives within Naked. You will be an opinionated proponent of open member data and technology, and develop a vision for how to realise this within the context of a social messaging environment such as Naked.
You will have in-depth experience across web and mobile technologies and standards, as well as substantial experience in designing, documenting and supporting web services API. You will have worked in an agile way on a number of previous projects and be accustomed to supporting a member-led development process.
You and your team will play a critical role in shaping the evolution of the next killer application and will be ready for all the tears and laughter that accompanies this challenge.


To work at Naked you need to have:

• A degree BS/BA/MS in Computer Science or related field.
• Software background with significant knowledge and exposure to Ruby on Rails.
• Entrepreneurial drive, demonstrated ability to achieve and stretch goals.
• Solid leadership skills and experience building strong engineering teams.
• Significant experience in software development across boundaries in a highly geographically distributed environment.
• Multi-domain expertise in mobile, web, and messaging technologies and standards.
• Strong project management skills.
• Budget forecasting , management and reporting experience
• Proven track record of product delivery.
• Able to fit in well within an informal start-up environment and to provide hands-on management.
• Able to establish credibility with smart engineers quickly, and provide long term vision and motivation.



What’s in it for you?
Apart from working in a fun but highly dynamic and challenging environment, we offer a competitive salary and benefits, stock equity package and an outstanding and unusual working environment.
Naturally we are an Equal Opportunity Employer.