Vacation With An Artist (VAWAA) is a platform for creative types and lifelong learners to book 4-7 day apprenticeships with curated master artists and craftspeople in 23 countries around the world. From painting with a prolific artist in Italy, calligraphy with a grandmaster in Kyoto to making a bicycle with India's first bamboo bicycle-maker, it's a chance to learn new skills and immerse into the life of a master in a new place. 

We won the 2019 prestigious Webby Award for Best in Travel Websites and have been featured in Washington Post, WSJ, Forbes, Travel & Leisure, Artsy and VICE. It is an exciting time and we are growing the team to realize the big vision.

www.vawaa.com

DESCRIPTION:

The Head of Engineering/ Technical Co-founder will lead all engineering efforts to help VAWAA expand from a smaller set of passionate customers to a widespread consumer base of people looking for unique experiences that inspire them. You'll build and oversee our front end website (where 100% of VAWAA bookings are made), our proprietary backend and various other custom back-end tools and third party integrations.  Like our core product, the codebase has been built with care. It has a high percentage of test coverage for essential business operations and has been kept up to date with the modern development practices and tools. We need someone who takes pride in the readability and maintainability of their code but also understands the importance of regularly shipping features. The ideal candidate likes the challenge of innovating in travel/hospitality tech, has already built something from scratch, intuitively understands our product and vision, and is able to take responsibility for the entire stack.

TECHNOLOGIES USED:

• Rails API / ActiveAdmin interface
• Statically generated pages via Vue / NuxtJS front-end
• Git/Github
• Integrations with Customer.io and Mailchimp for transactional emails
• Imgix for image processing

RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Always think about the big picture, from strategy to execution, with deep understanding of both technology and business.
2. Manage API and admin dashboards/interface in Ruby on Rails
3. Build public product pages, content pages, and customer tools in Vue/Nuxt
4. Partner directly with Founder/CEO to produce internal and user-facing features
5. Regularly seek out new ways to automate processes while maintaining high quality interactions
6. Clearly communicate plans, risks, trade-offs, and opportunities
7. Take care of small IT tasks i.e. Google users and debugging integrations
8. Be a thought leader for how tech can shape the strategic direction of our business and unlock more growth

YOU MUST HAVE:

• 3+ years experience working as a full stack or backend developer
• A solid understanding of APIs, databases, security, and proper maintenance of a back-end
• High standards in code quality and readability (DRY)
• Comfort implementing a design to specification
• Lifelong learner with a shared belief in our mission of transforming lives via immersive hands-on experiences in different cultures
• A strong independent work ethic. You strive for excellence and take pride in your work.
• Experience working in a high growth company. You embrace a startup's agility, speed, working under pressure, and ability to handle ambiguity with grace are must-haves for this position.

LOCATION:

• For first 3 months, the role will be based at VAWAA HQ in Brooklyn, New York. Flexibility to be remote after that.

WHY YOU MAY LIKE VAWAA:

• Help shape the future of immersive creative experiences in one of the fastest growing industry.
• Help preserve artistic traditions and give them a global stage.
• Work with genuinely good people and founder who is a former award winning creative director from a top New York digital agency.