Join SCRUFF

Opening: Senior Software Engineer

May 2012

SCRUFF, one of the largest and fastest-growing gay social networks worldwide, has an immediate opening for a software engineer ready to become immersed in mobile development and grow into a senior technical role. Ideal candidates have at least 4 years of professional software development and BS in Computer Science, or equivalent.

Why we think you'll love working at SCRUFF

SCRUFF is not a traditional software startup - we think there are a few reasons why working at SCRUFF is a one-of-a-kind experience:

• You will get to make consumer software that lots of people use.

Consumer software is by far one of the most fun businesses to be in. Consumer software is easy to explain, you can share it immediately with your friends, and you get to apply both technical and design skills. Business-to-business software is well and good, but there's a reason why we aren't writing automated trading platforms for hedge funds :) SCRUFF has been fortunate to find a market that is both growing quickly and very excited about our product. When you come on board, the code you write will affect hundreds of thousands of guys every day.

• Our #1 priority for you is your professional development

Most startups want engineers to start producing shipping code on day one. We would much rather take the time to allow you to explore our codebase, do deep dives into the technologies we use, and ultimately write great production code in weeks or months. We feel mentorship is one of the most critical aspects of enjoying your job.

We also strive to practice good core software engineering principles, because we believe in the long-run it will make the code you write better, bring more benefits to our members, and be most helpful for you in your career. The ideal candidate should come in with a healthy ego and a positive attitude, be open to critical feedback, and be eager to develop more in the practice of professional software development.

• You will touch every piece of code we have.

Our engineering team is small. There are no client-side/server-side functional divides. You will be responsible for the servers (we have a lot). You will be responsible for the client (iOS and Android). Your brain will be stretched in new and confounding ways. But in the process you will build a set of skills that will form the core of all software innovation of the next 10 years. What we teach you at SCRUFF about mobile development will be like learning HTML in 1995 or GUI programming in 1985.

• Parties are our business, and now they're yours, too.

No, seriously. Lots of startups will talk about their Friday night beer busts, but at SCRUFF we take it to a new level. SCRUFF partners with promoters and events all across the world. As a SCRUFF team member, you will become part of the SCRUFF brand, and will have opportunities to represent us at events both locally and across the country.

• New York City.

SCRUFF is based in Manhattan, the most amazing city in the world. Everyone you've ever met will want to come and visit. Your other friends who work at banks will complain to you about their schedules while you are busy planning SCRUFF parties into your workday(night?) Startup networking events will be blocks away, every day. You'll have access to the most restaurants, the most culture, and an endless stream of new people to meet. We love New York, and think you will love it too.

What we're looking for

We don't have have a long list of domain-specific requirements, and we expect to train you on the technologies that are new to you. That said, we have a few qualities that we are going to be looking for in applicants:

• Passion for software

We love writing software as much as we love New York :-) We would expect that you've been coding for some time, and have probably completed a large, shipping software project (or two). Having points on stackoverflow.com or a public repo (or two) on github.com are both positives. We also like people with opinions, positive and negative, about different languages, environments, and industry trends.

• Integrity

We feel this is one of the most important professional attributes a person can have. This means having a strong work ethic, an openness to critical feedback, and an unwillingness to compromise when customers are being affected. Integrity is a hard thing to put in words, but we read this article in the New York times that comes close to describing this idea.

• Willingness to learn

We are probably going to infuse you with more knowledge in the first 6 months than you have ever been expected to learn before. Literally, we need you to become an expert in Objective C, Java, Ruby (and Sinatra), Mysql, pretty much the entire Amazon AWS stack, Redis & memcached, and that's to start. We need someone with raw talent who dives into new technical challenges fearlessly. Most of all, we need someone who genuinely enjoys the experience of learning, and who wakes up every day ready to throw away all he's learned about X because today, Y has changed everything.

Talk to us

We are a close team with experience at Microsoft, Google, Digitas and Roche and education from Stanford, MIT, USC and Boston College. If you're excited by what we've described, talk to us! Email jobs@scruffapp.com with Software Engineer in the subject line and we'll take things from there. PS - we like programming puzzles, and hope you like them too :-)