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Job Description

About the Company:

Our client, Uncommon Knowledge and Achievement, Inc Teacher University ( “UKA Teacher U” or “Teacher U”), aims to develop and deliver high-impact training for New York City district and charter public school teachers. It grows out of the work of three of the country’s most effective charter school organizations – Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First (UKA). In collaboration with Hunter College, Teacher U currently trains mostly novice elementary and middle school teachers over a two-year period, giving them the practical tools they need to excel in their classrooms. On periodic Saturdays during the school year and during a portion of the summer, dynamic professors from leading educational institutions and master teachers from some of the most successful K-12 classrooms in the country lead enrolled teachers to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to lead their students to demonstrably remarkable annual achievement gains. The enrolled teachers receive provisional certification at the start of the program, permanent certification when they finish, and a Master’s degree from Hunter College based on the successful completion of the Master’s level academic program and on a thesis defense that includes generating student growth and achievement.

Teacher U regards technology innovation as a fundamental platform of their strategy. It is developing a robust, interactive software platform designed to provide a high-touch, educational experience for the enrolled teachers and help support the highly functioning institute staff.

About the Position:

Teacher U has an immediate opening in its Technology Department for a Senior Application Developer. The Senior Application Developer will play a critical role in developing a mature and robust technology environment. Reporting directly to the Director of Technology & Knowledge Management, the Senior Application Developer will collaborate closely with other functions, such as the Teaching & Learning Team. As the organization matures, the Senior Application Developer may manage a team of junior application developers and/or contractors/consultants.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

- In conjunction with the Director of Technology & Knowledge Management and the Teaching & Learning team, design and create new, custom academic software
- Support an existing learning management system (“Course Platform,” developed using Moodle) by fixing tactical issues and creating forward-looking software enhancements
- Translate documented and anecdotal application requirements to the production of high quality, bug-free software
- Enable appropriate data integration between Teacher U systems
- Train Teacher U’s staff and enrolled teachers on the use of our software
- Coordinate with third-party application development contractors and consultants, as necessary
- Maintain and enhance Teacher U’s public website
- Configure, support, and enhance an existing administrative system (Salesforce)
- Provide occasional on-site technology support for Teacher U class days at Hunter College, in conjunction with Teacher U’s Academic Technology Coordinators and other Teacher U staff

Candidate Requirements:

This is an outstanding opportunity to play an integral role in public education reform. Therefore, first and foremost, the Senior Application Developer must share the team’s sense of urgency about the need to improve student achievement through phenomenal teacher training. Candidates for the position must also have the following qualifications:

- High level of professionalism, self-confidence, decisiveness, and initiative
- Willingness to accept constructive criticism, work on tight timelines, and pitch in, if necessary, in areas not confined to pre-defined domains
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, unstructured, entrepreneurial environment without formal training or orientation
- Flexibility, and a related ability to work autonomously, as well as take direction from the Director of Technology and Knowledge Management as needed
- Excellent organization and project management skills including the ability to manage and pay outstanding attention to details, work independently, manage multiple projects with multiple deadlines, and set priorities accordingly
- Ability to work with colleagues both at the adjacent desk and in geographically separated cities
- Tendency to thoroughly document all decisions, even in the face of other competing priorities
- Solid command of verbal and written English, ability to convey complex concepts through succinct visual communications, and ability to tailor communications for technical and non-technical audiences

Candidates for the position must also have the following technical skills:

- Experience with developing custom software from scratch and configuring/customizing existing applications
- Ability to competently work with the “alphabet soup” of SDLC, LMS, SIS, CRM, AJAX, MVC, OOP, CMS, SQL, etc.; translate its meaning to laypeople; and competently converse in these areas with technical engineers
- Experience with all layers of the LAMP stack
- Ability to articulate best practices for version control, code promotion, configuring technical environments, and writing and tuning database queries
- Familiarity with several different development methodologies and ability to articulate an informed preference for at least one methodology
- A strong preference for open source technologies, and ability to articulate an associated rationale

Desired Characteristics:

The ideal candidate for this position will also possess some combination of the following professional and personal characteristics:

- Fluency with many of the following technologies:
+ Moodle
+ Salesforce
+ Content management tools
+ Unix shells
+ Virtualization
+ Web services (particularly Amazon Web Services)
+ Video streaming and codecs
- At least five years of professional experience with application development, with demonstrated results of on-time and on-budget delivery
- A strong eye for UX/UI considerations
- A high level of zest, grit, hope, gratitude and enthusiasm
- A sense of humor
- A background or interest in standards-based education reform
- A bachelor’s degree, preferably in engineering or computer science

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