Help Wanted

Starting immediately, Flickr is hiring for the positions below. You’ll notice there are a lot of them! All of them are newly created positions and represent the first significant expansion of the Flickr team post-acquisition. We’re settled now,  grown a few thousand percent, have rebuilt our structure and have a clearer vision than ever of where we want to go. Though we’re now one of the largest services on the internet, in many ways we’re just beginning. And you can be a part of it.

The Flickr team has always been small, and it still is, but we need to grow if we are going to pull off all the things we want to do. And there is a lot we want to do. And it is going to change –the internet– the world: we will take Flickr as far from where it is now as today’s Flickr is from the seedling idea from which it grew.

These jobs are a chance to contribute to and collaborate on whole new ways of doing business, whole new ways of designing and delivering internet-based products, and continuing our tradition of innovation and success in a high-impact, world-changing way. The experience you will have is something you will tell your grandchildren about and the possibilities you create will influence a generation of net-based communities, businesses and tools. This is big.

Details in the extended entry for this post.

To apply, please email send an email to iwanttoworkonflickr@yahoo.com with the job’s title followed by the Req # (RX100….) as the subject line. Include a cover letter and resume: bonus points if the resume can be included in the email or if it is online somewhere and you just send a link (we will accept attachments but we’ll be really annoyed by them — keep that in mind). 

We smile on those who already have deep experience with Flickr: include a link to your photos page if you have one. Be prepared to tell us why you want to work on Flickr specifically.

Note that we are comfortable shaping the roles to fit excellent candidates, so if you are not an exact match for the role described put "[Similar to:]" (with the square brackets) before the job title in the subject line and apply anyway.

If you don’t really match any open positions but are an exceptional candidate and have a burning desire to come and join us, use the subject line "No listed position, but we have to talk".

The boilerplate has been left out of the top of each job description. Here it is:

Flickr revolutionized photo sharing with its launch in 2004. Its innovative approach to how people store, share, sort and search for photos has attracted millions of users and influenced the way the current generation of web-based products and services are developed. Flickr’s vision is to be the ‘eyes of the world‘, enabling the sharing and discovery of what people see around the globe, from friends and family to group collaboration to breaking news. Flickr was acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005, and remains a separate brand.

The Flickr team is star-studded but prides itself on teamwork, technically capable but operates in a product- and user-driven paradigm and is profoundly driven to take Flickr as far beyond where we are now as the web in 2005 is beyond the web in 1995. We have a privileged position inside of Yahoo! and a mandate to change the world (and the company). This will be a job that you love and are proud of for your entire life.

All positions are regular/full time and based (for now) in Yahoo!’s Santa Clara office. Later this year the Flickr team will be moving to Yahoo!’s San Francisco office and the people who fill these positions will all be coming along. All include Yahoo!’s standard (generous) compensation and benefits package.

Requirements for all positions include:

  • A passion for the web and the possibilities it affords for new forms of human interaction and community
  • A strong tolerance for office tomfoolery (acting like a monkey, etc.)
  • A desire to change the world
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Ability to legally work in the US
  • Accountability, honesty, responsibility, flexibility … and a sense of fun and playfulness

See positions in:


Engineering

Application Engineer, PHP (two positions)

RX1000015729 or RX1000015730 

These roles are in the "application engineering group" and work on core Flickr functionality and application logic which is mostly developed in PHP and mostly expressed through the user interface and our application programming interfaces. You’d be working on extending and maintaining Flickr’s capabilities and features, streamlining and re-factoring the current system, integrations with Yahoo! and partner technologies and a whole lot of interface logic (whether for users or apps).

Some key attributes of a successful candidate will be:

  • Extensive experience with PHP (ideally with Smarty or a similar templating system)
  • Solid competency with SQL (ideally in a federated database environment, MySQL a plus), XML, and browser technologies
  • Fluency with the LAMP stack
  • Prior experience with or knowledge of large scale, high volume systems
  • At least five years software development experience, a large portion of which in a team environment
  • A familiarity with a wide variety of software development methodologies, tools, languages and approaches

Some responsibilities of the position:

  • Good clean fast code that thinks a few moves ahead
  • A disciplined approach to design/architecture, development, documentation and maintainability
  • Self-management in the code-test-debug cycle
  • Co-ordination with other team members, partners and external stakeholders through documentation and discussion
  • Contribute to the continual improvement of our development process

Bonus:
Academic background in computer science (BSc or MSc)
Expertise in Java, Perl, JavaScript, C or C++
Expertise in networking, databases, mail handling, image processing, Windows or OS X development.
Experience in both small start-up and large company environments

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions

* * *

Engineering Manager

RX1000014516

Though the engineering team is still small in absolute terms, we’ve outgrown our old planning and development methodologies which were primarily based on overhearing what the people next to us were talking about. We need someone to help manage the team and (especially) external relationships, not as a lead developer or architect (though having the technical chops is still a requirement) but as a captain or coach.

This is one part pure people management, one part strategic oversight and one part pure ‘on the ground’ tactics. This person will be a peer to the manager of application engineering and will have a blend of front end and back end responsibilities.

We need someone who always knows exactly what is going on now and what will be happening next, who owns the plan and the priorities, someone to provide course correction, who introduces Just Enough Process when necessary, as necessary. In this job, being successful means continually moving the team into higher and higher planes of flow, making sure that each individual is growing and happy, and ensuring that everyone knows what is going on, on the team and off — communicating with other stakeholders is a vital component.

Some key attributes of a successful candidate will be:

  • Excellent, demonstrated team building and people management skills
  • Demonstrated ability to attract and retain top talent
  • Strong leadership and excellent general management skills
  • Solid working knowledge of all supporting infrastructure components, including operating systems, hardware, storage, and networking
  • Strong project-management skills and proven track record for product delivery
  • Entrepreneurial drive, demonstrated ability to achieve stretch goals in an innovative and fast paced environment

Some responsibilities of the position:

  • Scheduling, spec’ing, managing and reporting on a wide variety of engineering projects
  • Working with our head of ops on operational oversight and decision-making
  • Co-ordination with other team leaders, especially the manager of the application engineering group
  • Multiple direct reports

Bonus:
Academic background in computer science (BSc or MSc)
Preferred candidate will have experience with large data sets and high volume applications
Experience in both small start-up and large company environments

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions


Product/General Management

There are two new product management roles being created. They are called ‘A’ and ‘B’ here just to distinguish them (these are not levels or grades):

Product Manager A

RX1000015758

Flickr’s vision is to be the eyes of the world and we are looking for an individual who can share and drive forward our goals by helping grow a key new aspect of the product.

Specifically, we are looking for someone who understands the potential of user-contributed media to deliver timely (personally, geographically, etc) relevant information to a multiplicity of audiences. If you’ve been thinking about these ideas we want to talk to you.

Some key attributes of successful candidates will be:

  • Web technology savvy
  • Determination to execute
  • Strong relationship building skills
  • Skilled communicator
  • Understanding of online communities
  • A proven track record in product management

Some key responsibilities of the position:

  • Build a strategy and product requirements for next generation Flickr services
  • Help communicate the strategy vis-a-vis the Flickr and Yahoo product portfolio
  • Develop a strong understanding of specific sub-sector of the existing Flickr user base as well as a new set of incoming users
  • Identify and drive key (internal and external) partnerships to execute against the strategy
  • Drive product development and project mange the product implementation
  • Provide direction to outbound marketing through existing and new channels (virally, via eco system, etc)

Bonus:
BSc in Computer Science preferred
MBA or strong business/entrepreneurial experience preferred
Marketing, journalism, photography, photo acquisition or editorial experience all strong plusses

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions

* * *

Product Manager B

RX1000015759

Flickr’s vision is to be the eyes of the world and we are looking for an individual who can share and drive forward our goals by helping grow a key new aspect of the product.

Specifically, we are looking for someone who can harness the potential of Flickr’s large and growing commercial eco-system to drive product richness as well as increased monetization for Flickr, Flickr’s users, and Flickr partners. If you’ve been thinking about these ideas we want to talk to you.

Some key attributes of successful candidates will be:

  • Web technology savvy
  • Determination to execute
  • Strong relationship building skills
  • Keen and creative business sense
  • Skilled communicator
  • A proven track record in product management

Some key responsibilities of the position:

  • Build a strategy and product requirements for next generation Flickr services
  • Help communicate the strategy vis-a-vis the Flickr and Yahoo product portfolio
  • Develop a strong understanding of existing Flickr user base as well as our growing eco-system of partners
  • Identify and drive key (internal and external) partnerships to execute against the strategy
  • Drive product development and project mange the product implementation
  • Provide direction to outbound marketing through existing and new channels (virally, via eco-system, etc)

Bonus:
BSc in Computer Science or engineering background
MBA or strong business/entrepreneurial
Payment technologies, intellectual property experience all strong plusses

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions

* * *

Project/Program Manager

RX1000015763

We are looking for an individual who can share and drive forward our goals by helping the team execute, execute, execute and execute.

Specifically, we are looking for someone who can help beat out a rhythm so that some of the most talented people in the world can not only work together in harmony, but actually find resonance to achieve world-changing results.

If you have a serious addiction to getting things done and you love working with brilliant, interesting, loving, crazy people, we want to talk to you.

Some key attributes of successful candidates will be:

  • Strong level of comfort with web technologies and knowledge of the full design & development rainbow: design, application logic, UI implementation, back end systems, etc.
  • Proven track record in project or program management
  • Commitment to creative problem solving in organizational effectiveness
  • The ability to navigate the narrow channel between the Rock of "open to innovation" and the Hard Place of "deliver results on time"
  • Desire to change the world

Some key responsibilities of the position:

  • Be accountable for the development timeline on a daily basis
  • Help the team make schedule/feature priority trade-offs
  • Know hour-by-hour what’s going on and what’s coming next and communicate that like heck
  • Develop a strong understanding of existing Flickr infrastructure and technical systems
  • Build strong relationships within the team to help create fair and accurate timelines
  • Build cross-functional relationships with key Yahoo! constituencies to leverage platform resources

Bonus:
BSc in Computer Science or engineering background preferred
Experience in both small start-up and large company environments

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions


Design

Senior UI / Interaction Designer

RX1000015764

Every week, millions of users visit Flickr.com and millions more access Flickr through API-based applications, photos posted to blogs and other third party sites and services. It’s a complex and quickly growing application and ecosystem and design is at the heart of it.

We have a track record of innovation to build on and a strong desire to radically improve Flickr, both for new users & casual visitors as well as the power users who form the core of the community. There’s a huge and tremendously long list of new features, programs and technologies set to come online this year. If you’ve ever wanted to have a big impact, this is it.

Some key attributes of successful candidates will be:

  • Ability to quickly understand the constraints of a design problem and identify the tradeoffs; the ability to communicate those tradeoffs to fellow decision makers
  • Strong empathic skills: you should be able to understand how and why an interface succeeds or fails and spot problems in layout, architecture, flow, copy or presentation before they go into production
  • Strong visual design skills and a fanatical attention to detail down to the pixel
  • A good all-rounder, informed by deep thought and consideration into the philosophical and practical considerations that make great design
  • Demonstrated experience and proven track record in application/software design

Some key responsibilities of the position:

  • Screen and user flow design communicated in a way that works for all the parties involved (engineers, product managers, partners,etc.)
  • Contribution to product design process and priority decisions
  • Ensuring Flickr is both usable and powerful, simple when it needs to be, and delights its users with attention to detail and a prescient forethought to their needs
  • Push the boundaries of what’s possible on the web to create better experiences for users

Bonus:
Academic background in human factors/ergonomics, cognitive science, psychology or HCI
Design experience in mobile or desktop software
Experience creating or maintain interface guidelines in a software ecosystem environment

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions

* * *

Front end: Markup & CSS

RX1000015767

If you love to make things happen in a browser and think not only in
terms of code that will make the same thing happen in Safari and WinIE,
but in terms of the economy, maintainability, reusability
and, well … beauty of the code, then we want to talk to you.

Some key attributes of successful candidates will be:

  • Thorough experience with web technologies and their interrelationships
  • Current and detailed knowledge of browser peculiarities
  • A disciplined approach to development, documentation, file structure
  • Strong visual design sense and excellent taste
  • A constant desire to improve, learn more and take things higher

Some key responsibilities of the position:

  • Coding new designs and updating, standardizing and re-factoring existing parts of the site
  • Working with application and front end (JS) engineers to create sophisticated interfaces for in-browser applications
  • Contributing to the continual improvement of our design and development process
  • Working with engineering, product management and community/customer care to solve problems and fix bugs

Bonus:
Solid JavaScript coding skills
Familiarity with PHP and Smarty templating
Strong UI design skills

Yahoo! is committed to equal opportunity. In that spirit, we welcome your interest in our employment opportunities.

Back to application instructions