35 - 45k Central London
Title: Creative Technologist
description
The Creative Technologist is the pivotal role in the creative application of technology, providing direction on project solutions and guiding the technical execution of client and internal projects. The individual will be a client-facing technology evangelist able to inspire colleagues and clients, offer strategic and technical direction, and be at ease talking about new and emerging media with people of all levels.
The role sits along side the other technical team members, but carries with it a special emphasis on the wider creative and strategic implications of the use of technology.
Learn, Do, Teach: ROLE and abilities
Conceptually adventurous – work with the Creative Department to conceive, develop and execute creative ideas and solutions in innovative interactive ways, employing levels of technology appropriate to the brief, audience, budget, etc (strategic and tactical approaches to the use of technology)
Curious – forward-thinking, keeping ahead of new trends and technologies, finding ways of transferring new ideas and knowledge to your team. You know the next big thing before everyone else and how creative agencies and clients might use it to its advantage.
Breadth of knowledge – up-to-date hands-on understanding of all essential platforms: mobile, Web, social media, physical/ambient, and back-end systems and the interconnection between each – it is essential to keep your hand in at the practical level and be able to demo ideas, as well as help produce final build work.
Commercially-aware – able to conceive, scope, plan and control technical projects from inception to completion. Gauge the technical validity and viability of proposed ideas and advise how they can be executed. Solutions need to be in-line with the client’s strategy and support and facilitate their business objectives - within project parameters.
Communication and leadership – able to present and defend brilliant technical solutions, and inspire colleagues and clients. Lead / nurture / mentor the build of projects that fall outside existing capabilities and skills.
Educate – be an evangelist for technology. Be a resource for others and help them move beyond what they already know. Run show-and-tell sessions to help disseminate knowledge, pitched at a level they can understand and use. Help identify external guests / suppliers for the purposes of knowledge share.
Briefing and scoping – work with the other Technical team members to ensure projects have comprehensive and watertight technical / function spec documents as an internal and external reference (when using third parties). Help PMs accurately cost / estimate proposed solutions.
Talent spotting – feed into the recruitment / evaluation of new technical personnel.
Process – work with Technical / PM / Creative to formalise necessary workflow processes (briefing, testing, etc). It is expected that the Creative Technologist help source, evaluate and liaise with third party technical suppliers.
IA – direct and/or create logical, intuitive and user-friendly IA solutions to underpin and shape the design / build process.
TECHNICAL SKILLS & abilities
Hands-on experience of the following:
- HTML / CSS / HTML5
- AJAX / Javascript / jQuery
- SOAP/XML/JSON API integration
- Back-end technologies (PHP in particular)
- Social Media APIs
- Mobile development (iPhone SDK, Objective C development experience, Android SDK)
- Working with Content Management Systems / Wordpress custom coding
- MySQL
- Actionscript AS3
- Development for SEO and analytics
