Prota is an operator-investor group that brings experience, capital, and talent to bold ideas. Our teams utilize time-tested approaches, strategic thinking, story-driven design, and rock-solid engineering to bring digital & physical products to market, including IoT, blockchain applications, AI, and other emerging technologies.
We’re looking for an experienced Pre-Seed Startup CTO to join a small but growing team of entrepreneurs and venture builders.
Ideally, you have 5+ years of web development experience and are familiar with all layers of the web development stack (from database and infrastructure, to javascript and CSS).
You should be confident with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and React, as that’s our default toolset.
We’d prefer that you also have experience with a myriad of other technologies (eg, Phoenix/Elixir, Python, Vue, Angular, Typescript, Dart, Swift, Kotlin, ReactNative, Firebase, AWS) and understand when and where to leverage specialized tools to solve problems elegantly.
The position would include responsibility for the end-to-end development of software applications. This will include defining and communicating technical and design requirements, and managing a team of developers to deliver projects in a timely manner.
This will be a fully remote position with flexible schedule. With a good internet connection, you should be able to live wherever life takes you.
We currently have team members in Boston, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Belgrade; we encourage occasional co-working sessions when you are in one of these regions.
About Prota
Every member of Prota is expected to bring a genuine entrepreneurial spirit to the table; many of our product ideas are generated internally and brought to market in collaboration with our incubation partners, which include both large enterprises and new founder teams.
This is a remote, full-time position that can be either a “contract” or “contract-to-hire” setup. We are a remote and distributed organization with teams centered mainly around Chicago, New York, Seattle, and Belgrade.
Importantly, we include our software developers (and all team members) in much more than just their domains of work. We value human flourishing, education, and a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving. We strive to include everyone - as they are available/interested - in all aspects of business development, design, engineering, and marketing across our organization.
Responsibilities
- Develop front-end web architectures, patterns, and fully functioning applications (React/Redux)
- Develop server-side architectures and APIs with Ruby on Rails, leveraging best-practices for authentication and authorization
- Architect databases (PostgreSQL) and data IO from 3rd-party APIs
- Optimize User Experience across web and mobile platforms
- Ensure responsiveness, performance, and scalability of applications
- Participate in the overall application lifecycle while focusing on coding and debugging
- Collaborate with visual designers, front-end developers, product managers, and other software engineers
- Define and communicate technical and design requirements
- Train, help, and support other team members
- Build high-quality, reusable code
- Troubleshoot and debug applications
- Stay up to date with current best practices
- Conduct UI tests, unit tests, integration tests, and optimize performance
- Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of designers, developers, and entrepreneurs
- Participate in conferences and educational programs
Requirements and Qualifications
- Entrepreneurial drive and product sensibilities: we regularly create, develop, and work with startups
- 5+ years of experience as a back-end developer
- In-depth understanding of web development
- 5+ years of experience with one or more programming languages such as Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, etc. (Ruby preferred)
- 5+ years of experience with a CMS framework
- 5+ years of experience with HTML, JavaScript, CSS
- 2+ years of experience with React (ideally with Redux)
- Critical thinker and problem-solving skills
- Team player with an attitude of “leaving the campsite better than we found it” and “we’ve got each other’s back” state of mind
- Good organizational and time-management skills
- Participation in regular project stand-ups even with potential time zone challenges
- Meet project deadlines
- Effectively communicate with peers, superiors, and stakeholders
- Make rational, logical decisions and the ability to defend them to your peers, superiors, and stakeholders.
- Take responsibility for your work and mistakes.
Life at Prota / Benefits
As discussed above, we are a fully remote organization, with team members in Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Belgrade. While the plurality of the organization spends some time in Chicago, there is no location requirement as long as you have a space to work and a good internet connection. We normally meet in person 1-2x per quarter, which may necessitate travel depending on your location.
With Prota, you’ll be able to control your own destiny with a comp model that allows you to work flexible hours on a wide variety of projects, get exposure to multiple disciplines outside of software engineering, and have the opportunity to earn equity in startups.\n This is a remote position.