VigLink

Work at VigLink

Software Developer

VigLink is looking for exceptional engineers with strong Java or Scala skills and a well-rounded background in computer science, including algorithm design and programming languages. You should have a proven track record of delivering robust, high-availability applications and understand the ins and outs of scalable data processing and storage. You must be capable of designing new data models, developing high-performance software, and architecting web-scale infrastructure.

Challenges

A few of the hard problems we're working on:

Semantic Search
Develop or license a catalog that asserts that URL A on Merchant 1 and URL B on Merchant 2 sell 'the same' product (with all the nuances and edge cases that implies.) Extract related metadata like pricing information
Data Mining
Analyze historical buying behavior across millions of transactions to identify relevant factors in customer merchant preference and expected revenue by merchant and product.
Real Time Auctions
Build a real-time auction comparing expected revenue per merchant calculated across dozens of factors and return a result in 200ms.
About You
  • You've substantially built something you can point to. Merely following instructions is not enough. We need people who build things.
  • You work for startups. Not as an aspiration but as a way of life.
  • You can communicate the good work you've done to us and to the other rockstars you'll be recruiting in your first week.
  • You're fun to be around and you appreciate other people who are the same.
Requirements
  • BA/BS degree in Computer Science preferred with a strong academic record (MS/PhD or equivalent a plus).
  • At least 3 years of multi-threaded server-side web application programming experience using agile development techniques.
  • Strong Java or Scala skills and object oriented design experience, including working knowledge of core libraries and design patterns. For Java developers, experience with Hibernate and Spring MVC are pluses.
  • Excellent database development skills including advanced SQL programming, a solid understanding of database technologies, and logical and physical data modeling.
  • Experience with Hadoop MapReduce and Cassandra (or a different NoSQL technology) is desirable.
  • This position is full-time and on-site in our San Francisco office.

Please include descriptions of or (preferably) pointers to code you've written.

Bonus points: Links to your GitHub account, open source contributions or personal code projects.

Front-End Developer

VigLink is looking for an exceptional front-end web developer to help evolve our standalone JavaScript library and our web site.

About Us

Not everyone loves JavaScript, HTML and CSS, but we do. We wrote the VigLink JavaScript library from scratch to work in as many browsers as possible without the help of third-party libraries. (Nothing against jQuery; we just need to keep the size down.) Our library is loaded billions of times each month across thousands of web sites. People are doing some seriously crazy, broken things with JavaScript out there. It has to expect the unexpected and "just work."

Legacy browser support matters for the JS library, but unless your browser is newer than IE 8, you're out of luck on viglink.com. Targeting only recent browsers means we get to play around with the new stuff, but more than that, it makes us more efficient.

Tools

We test our JavaScript library and web site with Capybara, Cucumber, Sinatra and Selenium. They're built with help from SASS (SCSS) and Google's Closure Compiler for minification, among other tools.

About You
  • You're interested in the state of the art of web standards, but realize adoption doesn't always move fast enough to take advantage. (But you wrote polyfill for that!)
  • You work for startups. Not as an aspiration but as a way of life.
  • You can communicate the good work you've done to the rest of the team.
  • You're fun to be around and you appreciate other people who are the same.
Requirements
  • At least 2 years of dedicated front-end web development.
  • Understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript principles and philosophies such as semantic markup, specificity and progressive enhancement. You know how and when to use them to your advantage.
  • Deep knowledge of HTML, CSS and especially JavaScript. We use jQuery on viglink.com, but don't have that luxury everywhere. It's not enough to have looked under the hood of your favorite library. You'll be rebuilding the carburetor.
Bonus Points
  • Graphic design skills. We'd like to turn you loose on the site to make whatever UI changes/improvements you like. If you can do some or all of your own design work, that's all the better.
  • Links to your GitHub account, open source contributions or personal code projects.

This position is full-time and on-site in our San Francisco office.

Head of Product

We are looking for an experienced, senior level Product Manager to drive VigLink products from conception to launch. In this role, you will become the most educated person in the company about the details of content monetization, affiliate marketing, link insertion, product catalogs, arbitrage, real-time auctions and other related arenas. You will guide product strategy discussions and then drive through concrete product plans, roadmaps and timelines and on to product launch.

About You
  • You have demonstrated excellence building great products in a startup environment. You can point to specific products you're proud to have driven to launch.
  • Your standard is that you are actually making the product process easier, faster and better as opposed to creating process for it's own sake.
  • You're proficient at creating artifacts where appropriate – specifications, wireframes, mock-ups, timelines and more.
  • You're adept at collecting and interpreting data about performance, uptake, revenue and satisfaction and creating a feedback loop back into the product process.
  • Every day you make tough tradeoffs and balance "do it right" with "do it now".
  • You're confident engaging with customers, merchants, networks and other stakeholders to understand requirements, communicate constraints or simply promote the VigLink brand.
Requirements
  • At least 5 years demonstrated excellence in a product management or equivalent role preferably in building web products, with a proven ability to drive product planning, development, and launch.
  • A technical background is required and a CS degree is ideal. A solid understanding of html, http, REST semantics, simple SQL and the DOM will be needed to succeed. There will be code in the interview.
  • A flair for great usability and a talent for working with designers to produce beautiful usable products. Actual design talent would be a plus but not required.
  • A strong grasp of business dynamics and balancing the needs of various parties in a multi-sided network.
  • Very strong written and oral communication skills and great attention to detail.
  • Fluency in web culture and an understanding of online publishers, merchants and intermediaries.
  • Experience with auctions or arbitrage a strong plus.

This position is full-time and on-site in our San Francisco office.

Chief Scientist

In this role you will be responsible for the data analysis, modeling and relevant documentation used to develop technologies for web-based software systems.

Responsibilities
  • Analyze web log and product data as they relate to new business opportunities
  • Interview product managers and developers to define future system requirements
  • Evaluate and document system requirements for predictive modeling opportunities, such as methods to improve users' experience of existing products
  • Design methods to integrate state-of-the-art prediction algorithms into a production environment
  • Collaborate with software engineering group to integrate prototypes into software product
  • Provide technical and scientific expertise in core areas for text modeling, incl. machine learning and statistics
Requirements
  • Ph.D., or equivalent, in computer science
  • At least two years as a data scientist
  • Design and integration of data-centric solutions; principal analyst re: creation of business rule-base wizard/questionnaire
  • Statistical modeling of sequential data (HMMs and CRFs)
  • Named entity recognition algorithm design
  • Named entity disambiguation algorithm design
  • Randomized control A/B experiment design
  • Use of relational databases and SQL
  • Design using conditional random fields, decision trees, regression techniques and clustering
  • Work on multiple projects simultaneously and set and meet project timelines

This position is full-time and on-site in our San Francisco office.