Job Opportunities
Market Overview:
Less than 20% of the $21B spent advertising online is being spent on true brand advertising. Most online advertising is still direct response in nature. The vast majority of the $300B spent in offline advertising is spent on brand advertising. People consume 25% of their media online, but only 6% of advertising dollars are spent online.
Major brands know that their consumers are online and want to advertise there, but lack the measurement systems to give them confidence that they can spend and manage advertising dollars online wisely.
All of this is about to change in a big way.
Company Description:
From its roots as an online market research company, Vizu has developed an innovative system, Ad Catalyst, to reliably measure the performance of online brand advertising campaigns in real time. This system provides a scalable way for online publishers and advertising agencies to give their brand clients the confidence to spend more advertising dollars online.
Ad Catalyst reports the Brand Lift associated with online campaigns as opposed to the current insufficient measures like CTR, Impressions, and Uniques. Understanding the brand based impact of advertising helps major online publishers attract and retain branded advertisers at higher rates. Digital ad agencies also use Ad Catalyst to more efficiently and effectively manage their clients' online advertising efforts, especially in terms of media buying.
Vizu is already working with many premier online publishers, agencies and ad networks.
Vizu is located in San Francisco, California and is backed by Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson; Greycroft Partners; and WR Hambrecht.
Current Jobs Offering:
Lead Scalability/Systems Engineer
We are seeking an experienced systems engineer to join our growing technology team and take responsibility for the scalability and performance of our infrastructure. In this position you will tackle challenging problems and be a key member of a talented group of engineers who are building a cutting-edge Web platform. You will need to have a strong background and practical experience in building and scaling high traffic Web infrastructures. A position with Vizu offers you:
- The opportunity to learn and grow. You will work with a highly skilled team with decades of experience. Our lead engineers have been building sites since the beginning of the Web, and have a wealth of experience and knowledge as a result
- The opportunity to learn about and use the latest technologies on the Web today. From cloud computing to JavaScript/AJAX frameworks, we love to experiment with innovative tools and approaches while building our products. R&D is a part of everyone’s job at Vizu; all members of our engineering team are encouraged to bring new tools and approaches to the table
- Exposure to the unique challenges of scalability and performance. You will gain invaluable skills dealing with the engineering problems presented by the highest Web traffic conditions
- Strong momentum in our business and rapid growth plans. We are solving a critical problem in the online advertising business today that must be addressed for the continued growth of the overall industry
- An executive leadership team and investors comprised of visionaries who have successful track records in starting and running companies. We are well funded, and know how to grow a business sensibly and sustainably
- A supportive work environment that is challenging, engaging, and fun
- Excellent compensation and benefits
Primary Job Responsibilities:
- Develop and enhance Ad Catalyst’s infrastructure to support our high traffic loads
- Identify new approaches and technology for our infrastructure, and lead their integration into our systems
- Rapid prototype new app functionality in collaboration with the engineering team
- Facilitate internal brainstorms and team meetings; be an active and engaged member of the team
Required Skills & Experience:
- Above all a passion for quality, maintainability, and scalability in your work
- Solid understanding of UNIX-based operating systems: processes & threads, virtual memory, file system concepts, TCP/IP networking, signals communications & IPC, NFS & AFS, rsync
- Ability to use performance analysis and load testing tools to tune systems
- Strong understanding of server side software, scalability, performance, and reliability aspects
- Solid understanding of networking/distributed computing environment concepts: principles of routing, client/server communication, design of consistent network-wide file system layouts, load balancing
- 5+ years of direct hands-on experience in designing, implementing and maintaining Linux and/or Solaris environments
- 5+ years of direct hands-on experience with Apache, Tomcat & MySQL, particularly with respect to optimizing for performance & high availability, clustering, and failover
- 5+ years scripting (e.g. shell, Perl) experience
- 3+ years C/C++ development experience
- Experience working with Maven is a plus
- Experience working with content delivery networks (CDNs) a plus
- Experience working with cloud computing (e.g. Amazon EC2 & S3) is a plus
- Experience working with ad servers, third-party tags, and rich media is a plus
- Ability to work in a highly collaborative environment, use version control, issue tracking etc.
- Good written and verbal communication skills
- Comfortable performing in a rapidly changing environment
- Enthusiastic team player
- Strong analytical and problem solving skills. Must be extremely detail oriented
- Fast learner; can quickly come up to speed with different technologies and develop prototypes as needed
Miscellaneous:
- Company Address: 463 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
- Citizenship Requirement: U.S. Citizens only
- No re-location expenses covered
Contact
If you are interested in and qualified for this position, please send your resume to jobs@vizu.com with the words "Systems Engineer" in the subject line.
