At Hootenanny, we're on a mission to revolutionise the music industry. We believe artists deserve fair compensation for their work, and fans should enjoy a richer experience from their favourite musicians.
We’re redefining how artists build their careers and engage with their fans, through a groundbreaking new fanclub platform that combines community with behind the scenes access, exclusive video and audio, ticket presales and unique online and in-person experiences.
Founded by music lovers and industry professionals with backgrounds in artist management, label ownership and live festival booking, we recently graduated from the BPI’s Grow Music innovation programme for music tech startups, having been supported by investment and a Government grant.
About the role:
We’re looking for a dynamic Founding Lead Engineer to head up development of our innovative platform from the ground up.
Having already launched our first live fanclubs, this role will help us efficiently scale our platform to support over 1,000 artist fanclubs within 12 months.
This pivotal role involves strategic oversight, team management and hands-on development, and will be responsible for shaping the future of our platform, steering the project's technical direction.
We’ve been lucky enough to be supported by a strong network of advisors and contractors to get our first version of the product off the ground, but we’re looking forward to maturing our in-house engineering function.
As the first full-time member of the development team, this role will involve collaborating with leadership, contractors and other team members, mentoring a small team of developers while forward-planning for the growth of our engineering function, internal processes and culture, and the evolution of our tech stack and architecture.
You’ll be a fantastic addition to Hootenanny if you have:
- Experience in live platform operation and development with direct release management responsibilities.
- Proven experience in a senior or management role, managing the work, growth and pastoral wellbeing of team members.
- Grown a team through recruitment and community engagement.
- A demonstrable understanding of lean/agile development practices and methodologies, having worked in environments using them.
- Experience managing cloud infrastructure and executing third-party integrations.
- Strong background in product-led environments, implementing and using analytics and performance monitoring tools.
We use TypeScript across the entire stack - our front-end is built in React (Vite.js) using TanStack Query & Router and Tailwind CSS. Our backend is a NestJS Node app. We store data in MongoDB. We also use Redis, ffmpeg, Terraform, Linux, Digital Ocean (applications are hosted on DigitalOcean droplets) and GitHub Actions, among other technologies. We use Artillery and Playwright for testing.
Day to day you’ll be:
- Hands-on, developing clean, effective and well-documented full-stack code across front-end, back-end and infrastructure.
- Leading the operation, testing and maintenance of the Hootenanny platform.
- Working closely with senior leadership to set priorities, kicking-off projects at the earliest stage.
- Recruiting, training and mentoring a highly skilled, agile development team, promoting best practices, processes and a culture of innovation.
- Guiding on the due diligence and selection of new technologies or integrations.
- Implementing robust integrations with third-party services, including live streaming platforms, e-commerce solutions, and community tools.
- Championing best practices in software development, including version control, testing methodologies, and coding standards.
- The public face of all things tech at Hootenanny, representing us in front of advisors, potential partners and investors.
Personal Attributes:
- Passionate about music & technology.
- Team player, good at collaborating with others.
- A creative problem-solver, adept at big picture, strategic and visionary thinking.
- Able to keep teams feeling motivated and aligned, while enabling and empowering them to do great work.
- Comfortable making decisions based on the available data and information.
- Ability to clearly communicate complex ideas to a range of audiences.
- Flexible to adapt to changing priorities.
- Ability to work efficiently and deliver results quickly, maintaining high standards of quality and precision in a fast paced environment.
- A startup mentality, keen to get stuck into everything that’s needed to build and grow a successful company.
Why You'll Love Working at Hootenanny:
Commitment to a balanced work-life environment with a flexible hybrid work model.
Complemented by benefits, including:
- Central London office with great transport links (2 min from Charing Cross)
- Free gig and festival tickets
- Cycle-to-work scheme
- Generous holiday allowance
- A creative and vibrant workplace culture (with a great music playlist whether you’re at home or in the office) that values innovation, inclusivity, and fairness.
Package comprising salary and equity, dependent on experience.
Join Our Mission: If you're driven to building a better, fairer music industry using cutting-edge technology, we would love to hear from you.