Jobs

Associate Product Manager

Yapta, an early-stage Internet software company in Seattle, recently raised $3 million in venture capital and is looking for an Associate Product Manager with consumer experience to help us develop the next generation of online travel planning software. We are a "rapid development / rapid deployment" shop with a "get-it-done" approach. As a start-up, we are not bogged down in big company process, and instead focus on collaborative work to rapidly create truly breakthrough consumer applications.

Description

You will be an active and important contributor to the product development life cycle of Yapta's unique online travel planning and "personal assistant" tools. You will work closely with a Product Manager and a core team of 6 engineers with stellar backgrounds - Mongo Music, Judy's Book, Fogdog, Microsoft - in a tactical role to deliver a customer-focused product. Our ideal candidate would have an eagerness to learn, would be highly motivated, extremely well organized, and have a passion for early-stage startups. Strong interpersonal, analytic, and communication skills are a must. This position reports to the Product Manager.

Desired Traits and Abilities

Critical thinker - driven to ask, "why?"
Analytical approach to solving complex problems
Articulate - able to communicate ideas clearly and succinctly, both verbally and in writing
Works independently with initial direction: demonstrates ownership and a sense of urgency in completing work
Able to operate in a dynamic environment and respond to fast-changing priorities and assignments
Team-oriented: this position will require interaction with other core functions - Engineering, Marketing, and Business Development

Key Responsibilities

Assess consumer needs
Author product specifications for new products and features
Track and manage continual improvement of existing products
Track and analyze key business metrics
Assist the Product Manager in prioritizing new product features, and enhancements to the existing feature set, that deliver the best experience and most value to consumers
Work with the Product Manager to translate product concepts into detailed product specification documents

Software Engineer - Web

Want to be part of a highly visible, very disruptive and quickly growing Web 2.0 (3.0?) startup? We're looking for a talented Software Web Engineer to help build the various features on Yapta. The Yapta technology is bringing real value to users and there are still a lot of great features to be built. You would be joining a dynamic engineering team that is using python, JQuery, and various other technologies to help give users a great experience.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in CS or equivalent.
3+ years of extensive experience building web applications.
A solid understanding of HTML, HTTP, XML/HTTP, CSS, and JavaScript/AJAX. (Bonus points if you also understand server-side web and database programming.)
A demonstrable skill and passion for creating simple yet dynamic web interfaces.
Can understand and thrive in an environment where time-to-market vs. built-for-the-future trade-offs happen all the time, and be able to clearly communicate your recommendations and solutions.
Naturally works well with others in a dynamic and sometimes high-pressure environment.

Senior Software Engineer - Client

Want to be part of a highly visible, very disruptive and quickly growing Web 2.0 (3.0?) startup? Yapta is looking for a talented Senior Software Engineer to build and extend its popular Yapta Tagger and desktop software on more platforms and with added functionality. We're looking for software developers with experience building consumer software that enjoy being a core part of small agile teams. Ideal candidates will understand how to effectively manage their time, consistently meet targets and understand solid and concise software design.

Key Responsibilities

Designing and building light weight and user friendly browser extensions and other consumer software.
Developing timelines and goals for your work and managing your time to meet those goals.
Working with other talented engineers to provide seamless and reliable integration with the Yapta platform.
Quickly responding to unintended surprises in the software.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in CS or equivalent.
3+ years of solid consumer software development experience using C/C++, COM and/or the Windows SDK.
Experience developing, testing and debugging high quality consumer software.
Working knowledge of (or strong willingness to learn) browser toolbars, helper objects and extensions for Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Excellent object-oriented programming skills and an appreciation of high quality, highly reliable software.
Familiarity with Internet protocols and web services.
Can understand and thrive in an environment where time-to-market vs. built-for-the-future trade-offs happen all the time, and be able to clearly communicate your recommendations and solutions.
Naturally works well with others in a dynamic and sometimes high-pressure environment.

Senior Software Engineer - Systems

Want to be part of a highly visible, very disruptive and quickly growing Web 2.0 (3.0?) startup? Yapta is looking for a talented Senior Software Engineer to build the technology driving the Yapta.com website and pricing engine. We're looking for software developers with experience building scalable web technologies and enjoy being a core part of small agile teams. Ideal candidates will understand how to effectively manage their time, consistently meet targets and understand solid and concise software design.

Key Responsibilities

Designing and building distributed systems and web technologies to collect, process and present huge amounts of data.
Developing timelines and goals for your work and managing your time to meet those goals.
Working with other talented engineers to provide seamless and reliable integration of Yapta platform components.
Quickly responding to unintended surprises in the software.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in CS or equivalent.
3+ years of solid consumer website and scalable backend systems development experience, particularly Linux/Apache/MySQL/Python.
Deep understanding of scalable web server and database architectures
Excellent object-oriented programming skills and an appreciation of high quality, highly reliable software.
Can understand and thrive in an environment where time-to-market vs. built-for-the-future trade-offs happen all the time, and be able to clearly communicate your recommendations and solutions.
Naturally works well with others in a dynamic and sometimes high-pressure environment.

Director, Ad Sales

Yapta, an online travel planning service located in Pioneer Square in Seattle, is looking for a stellar Online Advertising Sales professional to help us grow our online display and text advertising revenue.

The successful candidate must be experienced with a current rolodex of agency and advertiser contacts, aggressive, creative, resourceful and must enjoy working in a highly entrepreneurial small office environment. The position requires outstanding sales, communication, and management skills as well as a gift for developing and maintaining relationships. S/He must be accomplished at selling display advertising and bundling graphical advertising with sponsorship opportunities. S/he will be responsible for hitting strict monthly, quarterly and annual sales targets. Eventually, this person will also build out a team to help further growth, so management and team skills are a must.

This position is based in Seattle but the candidate must be very familiar with all top agencies and top clients and be willing to travel as needed to win business. This position reports to the Vice President of Business Development.

Requirements:

5+ years experience selling online advertising with responsibility for an annual quota of at least $2-3 million.
5+ years of media sales experience.
Experience working at a small company (<50 people).
Experience bundling different types of advertising products (e.g. CPM media, sponsorships, newsletters, etc.).
Demonstrated ability to think creatively and sell strategically.
Track record of developing long-term relationships with (and commitments from) major clients and agencies.
Strong analytical skills.
Excellent online, written and verbal communications skills.
Strong organizational and multi-tasking skills.
Experienced business judgment.
20% Travel required.
College degree required.
The successful candidate must enjoy problem solving and be unafraid of technical solutions.
Teamwork skills essential; sense of humor required; overdeveloped sales egos must be checked at the door.

Advertising Manager

Yapta, an online travel planning service located in Pioneer Square in Seattle, is looking for an Advertising Manager to help us grow and manager our online display and text advertising clients. This role will be responsible for owning two key pieces of our advertising business:

Account Management: working with the Director of Ad Sales and VP of Business Development to implement campaigns online for new and existing clients, providing the client reporting on performance and optimizing campaigns as needed to improve results. This piece also requires attention on forecasting impressions per campaign and monitoring closely the progress to full delivery and maximizing CPM revenue.
Ad Operations: Implementation of campaigns, forecasting, reporting and analysis of advertising impressions run and revenues generated on Yapta.com. The key to operations in this role is the ability to look at the campaign data and determine the best course to maximizing revenue for that month. Specific revenue and delivery targets will be applied to goals.

Specific Duties

Implementing ad campaigns into ad serving system.
Monitoring third party network ads to maximize revenue.
Monitoring Google ad sense revenue and eCPM.
Working with clients to manage campaigns and report performance.
Recommend ways to optimize campaigns on both the revenue and performance sides.
Developing and maintaining financial models that forecast advertising impressions.
Extracting actual ad impressions delivered and preparing weekly reports for distribution to the CEO, VP of Business Development and others highlighting actual performance with expectations.
Auditing reported delivery of impressions and working with Finance to ensure only billable impressions are invoiced.
Reconciling impressions delivered to impressions billed and provide explanations for any variances, including summarizing findings in monthly reports.
Working on various ad hoc forecasts and analyses including support for client sales proposals and the annual budgeting and quarterly reforecast process.

Requirements

5+ years of relevant work experience in the area of online advertising operations, account management, sales forecasting, financial analysis, accounting and reporting, or other relevant areas.
Familiarity with advertising operations, online media, and/or ad sales, including inventory management, measurement, and forecasting.
110% attention to detail.
Willingness to go the extra mile and show self-initiative. Being a self-starter is a must.
Exceptional analytical skills and the ability to create sophisticated financial models.
Strong Excel skills (ideally familiar with macros, pivot tables, etc.) and atypically high attention to presenting work in a clear, well laid out manner.
Good communication skills and ability to deal with all levels including senior management.
Comfort and experience with a fast paced start-up environment. Interest is online digital media and travel.

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