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Director of Engineering

Who we are:

Songbird, http://www.songbirdnest.com

Pioneers of the Inevitable, Inc. is a top-tier venture-funded San Francisco Internet/digital media start-up that develops and nurtures Songbird, a mash-up of a desktop media player and a Web browser. Songbird is committed to playing the music you want, from the sites you want, on the devices you want, challenging the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet. Songbird’s final 1.0 release promises a burgeoning "Media Web" of accessible, interoperable media stores, subscription services and social networks.

Digital media pundits and developers are already chirping about Songbird’s 1M+ installs, recognition in BoingBoing, TechCrunch, Slashdot, Digg and volunteer translations to 40+ languages. Like Firefox, Songbird is Mozilla-based desktop software, cross-platform, open source, supports extensions and even enables Internet services to invoke media player and media device features from a Web page.

Songbird’s team is a successful clutch of developers, entrepreneurs and executives, most recently leading digital media strategy at Yahoo!, Nullsoft (Winamp), AOL, Netscape and Philips. The company is financed by Sequoia Capital, the original investors of Intel, Apple, Yahoo!, Google and YouTube.

"Songbird promises to be the Firefox of media players." – Aaron Boodman, Greasemonkey author

Songbird Developer Preview is available for download now. Songbird User Release will fly in late 2008.

The job:

We’re looking for a talented engineering manager to lead our team of software engineers to a successful hatching of Songbird, our flagship product.

The ideal profile:

You’re a technophile, a natural leader and enjoy mentoring engineers. You look forward to being a hands-on manager and while you will not be writing code, you should be respected by those who do. You have a great business sense and excel at explaining project details clearly in a non-technical manner. You have established a reputation of delivering high quality software on time.

Responsibilities:

• Expand, manage, mentor and motivate a team of software engineers dedicated to producing innovative quality software.

• Collaborate with product management and quality assurance to estimate engineering efforts, identify risks and recommend solutions.

• Define and implement engineering standards (coding, documentation, architecture, testing) and enforce processes.

• Serve as focal point for other departments on project status and information.

• Maintain a high standard for quality, and be accountable for on-time delivery of all client engineering projects.

Qualifications:

• Deep understanding of software engineering principles and Agile development process.

• 10+ years of software development with a minimum of 5 years managing medium to large software development teams.

• Demonstrated experience in project management concepts and the use of metrics to track and improve the software process.

• Proven track record of building and maintaining high-performing software engineering organizations through recruiting, training, and performance management.

• In-depth technical knowledge of software technologies including client-side application, database, web-services and object-oriented design.

• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills, and presentation skills.

• BS in Engineering, Computer Science or other technical field required.

• Knowledge of Mozilla technology and experience with open source a big plus.

This position reports to the Vice President of Engineering.

Availability: Full-time.

Compensation and Relocation: Pioneers of the Inevitable, Inc. has created a competitive compensation and equity package. Relocation assistance is designed on a per case basis. In short, we’ll be creative to get you here.