Lead Architect - Big Data Analytics Platform

About Skype
Skype is software that enables the world's conversations. Hundreds of millions of individuals and businesses actively use Skype to make over 300 million minutes of video / voice calls per day, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Skype is building a Data Analytics platform and this is an opportunity to be part of a new team that will shape the big data strategy of one of the world's most recognized internet brands. If you have a keen desire to stretch yourself to support the delivery of great products and features then Skype's the perfect place for you.

The Brief
Skype is looking for a creative, highly motivated software engineers to play a key role in the definition, design, implementation and delivery of Skype's data analytics platform. With your considerable technical expertise, you will be part of a team that will be making the hard decisions around tools, technologies, architecture, implementation and delivery of the platform; impacting how Skype does business now and in the future. We are looking for people that have experience implementing distributed, highly-available, flexible and secure back-endsoftware systems and designing / implementing automated test infrastructures.

Key Responsibilities
You are the driving individual for Skype's data analytics platform. With your technical leadership, you and your team will be making the hard decisions around tools, technologies, architecture, implementation and delivery of the platform; impacting how Skype does business now and in the future. You responsibilities include:

• Cooperation with Product Engineering Manager and Product Manager to define Skype's big data strategy and approach.
• Translating the strategy into a prioritized backlog of functional and technical requirements in partnership with key stakeholders across Skype and its partners and help drive that backlog to delivery.
• Architectural and technical leadership of Skype's big data platform.
• Hands-on participation in the implementation of core components of the architecture.
• Technical mentoring and education of the development and test teams.
• Development of tools to automate testing, deployment, administration and performance monitoring.
• Act as a technical ambassador for the data platform team within Skype and Microsoft.
• Coordination and cooperation with various stake holders across Skype.
• Travel to and interact with Skype's globally distributed work force.

• Experience and expertise architecting and implementing systems that can handle PB of data, thousands of TPS and millions of sockets.
• In-depth experience working with common elastic cloud solutions such as EC2, Google App Engine, Azure, etc.
• Knowledge of cloud/web services in general, and the Hadoop distributed system in particular.
• Knowledge of both SQL and NoSQL data base technologies such as Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB etc. as it pertains to replication and distribution.
• Proficiency in C++ and either C# or Java.
• Proficiency in at least one scripting language such as python, ruby, bash, JavaScript, PHP, etc.
• Experience implementing distributed, highly-available, flexible and secure back-end software systems.
• Experience designing and implementing automated test infrastructures for said systems.
• Knowledge of operating systems and their tuning for clustered and distributed environments.
• Track record of work in a distributed team.
• Demonstrated skill working in, contributing to, and technically leading high performing teams.
• Proven record in stretching oneself to support the delivery of great products and features as well as to drive high standards of achievement and delivery.
• Experience building and shipping software via Agile software development methodologies.
• B.Sc. in Computer Science or related field; M.Sc. preferred.