COO

Head of Engineering – Xploro

Are you looking for a role where what you do makes a positive difference to people’s lives? If so, then come and join us at Xploro. We’re an award-winning tech4good startup, that uses augmented reality, artificial intelligence and games to reduce anxiety for children going into hospital. We’re at a very exciting stage of our growth and we’re on the search for our next key hire.

A bit about Xploro and the history of the company

The Xploro story began in 2011 when Dom Raban’s 13 year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer.  Thankfully she’s now cancer free but when she was ill nobody told her what to expect and that left her feeling scared, anxious and alone.

Dom realised that this lack of information led to increased anxiety and so he set about trying to solve the problem by developing a product that is now called Xploro.

Essentially, it’s an information platform that uses Augmented Reality (AR), Gameplay and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver health information in a way that makes the patient feel empowered, engaged and most importantly informed.

The product has been clinically proven to help reduce the fear, anxiety and stress that’s involved in an already scary time and also aims to educate, which is vital for millions of children undergoing treatment around the world.

To hear a bit more about the Xploro story, please feel free to watch a talk our CEO Dom Raban gave a couple of years ago about his personal journey in the creation of Xploro – https://beingthestory.org.uk/spokesperson-network/speaker/dom-raban

We’re growing, and we’d like to find the right talent to help us make Xploro the best possible solution for children across the globe.

Up until 2020, Xploro had been developed by Dom’s brilliant team at his digital agency, Corporation Pop, but with equity funding secured, Dom spun-out Xploro as a company in its own right, stepped down from his MD role at the agency to focus on Xploro and made initial key hires to grow the business.

Right now Xploro is rapidly growing and expanding the number of partners, clients and users both here in the UK and abroad. We are currently engaging with major US and European hospitals, with manufactures of medical devices and equipment, and with a wide range of customers from as far afield as South East Asia, Australia and Africa.

As you can see, the Xploro proposition is truly solving a need for children around the world, and as such we’re looking to grow the team with the right people to continue on our journey, and this is where you may fit in.

Our current open role – Head of Engineering

As part of our rapid growth, we are now looking for a Head of Engineering to help define, support and deliver our Xploro product.  This is a role that will initially be pretty hands on, but could ultimately lead to a CTO position as both the product and team grows in 2021 and beyond.

We’re looking for someone who will be the go-to person for all things technology at Xploro. This will include everything from defining our core technology stack, how we create and release our products, how our teams work to deliver our products and how we hire our new team members.

To give more information on our needs, here is our current technology stack;

• A web-based React management and parent application.
• A patient app primarily built using C# within the Unity Game Development engine but also including a unique (and patent-pending) AI conversational agent coded in Python and C++.
• AR elements are handled using Vuforia within the Unity engine.
• An API that pulls everything together using Node.js
• Cloud infrastructure hosted on AWS

We recognise that this is a fairly diverse technical solution, and we don’t expect you to be au fait with every part of the stack.  But we do expect that you’ll be comfortable using different tools as part of your role, and you’ll be happy to explore new technology and solutions all the time. This isn’t the role for you if you love one particular language and way of doing things.

As part of the role you’ll be engaging with internal IT departments at a wide variety of healthcare organisations, so an understanding of their challenges or having previous experience of this, would be very much a nice to have.

Finally, we’re keen to help our new Head of Engineering grow, not only professionally but personally and will actively support raising their profile as the lead technical expert at Xploro.  We are looking for someone who is happy to be seen and known as the technical leader at Xploro, and will be proud to share their Xploro story and how they helped make it a success.

Your background… 

Most likely you will be working as a Senior Software Engineer for a fast-paced tech company or perhaps in a healthcare organisation already.

As the person running the development from a hands-on perspective, your opinion will be important and if you want to try something or implement a new way of working, you’ll be encouraged to do so.

Above all else, you’ll be a techie at heart who loves problem solving; using modern software development practices to make everything work as well as it can.

So why join Xploro?

At Xploro we believe that a role with us isn’t just about the salary and benefits – we have core beliefs that are entrenched in everything we do, and extend to everyone across the business;

1. We’re passionate about making products that truly deliver tech for good.  Everything we do, everything we create is centred around making children’s healthcare and treatment a better experience with better clinical results.  This is non-negotiable and we expect all of our team to truly believe that technology can, should and must be used for social betterment.
2. We’re open, inclusive and diverse.  Dom, the Board and initial hires are passionate about creating a company that is open, inclusive and diverse right from the start and this is at the core in everything we do.  We believe that a diverse team working together can truly create amazing products and experiences, and we actively work to ensure we create a diverse and positive team.
3. We empower our team to work how they believe is best to deliver our business goals.  We’re open and clear about where the business is going and collaboratively set our goals and targets, we don’t micro manage and we trust our team to deliver on their goals in their own manner.
4. We’re flexible.  At Xploro we believe that our team members know how, when and where they work best.  This may be fully remote, partially remote or even totally based in our Manchester studio, whatever works for you, we can make work too.  There’s no 9-5, there’s no clock watching and we trust our team to fit work around their personal lives.  Our only requirement is that for key meetings and workshops you are able to travel to Manchester. This may be once a fortnight, once a month or simply as and when required.
5. We believe our people are our best assets in helping make Xploro the best product it can be for our users, clients and partners.  Right from the start, we’ve worked hard to create a team that truly embodies our core beliefs and actively support individual’s growth on both professional and personal levels.  Our hiring process and role package;

Our hiring process and role package;

As we’re a small team, we have a fairly quick interview process;

You’ll have an initial call with Pete Honnor, our COO to discuss the role and any questions or thoughts you may have.  This is usually a 30 minute call.

You’ll then have a longer conversation with Dom and Pete to dive a bit more in detail about your experience and your ambitions for joining Xploro.  This is usually a 1 hour call.There will be a small technical task to complete to validate your technical understanding and approach to solving technical challenges.

Finally there is normally one last conversation with a member of the board to discuss your personal goals and how you see your role taking shape at Xploro.

The salary on offer is pretty flexible for the right person, with potential stock options on the table as an added bonus. At this point we must be clear that this isn’t the role for you if you’re just chasing a pay cheque, as quite simply, other organisations may pay you more.

However, if you share our belief in harnessing tech for good,  our goal in improving the pathways and outcomes of children’s healthcare, and our vision of Xploro as a health information platform to enable those improvements, this truly is an amazing opportunity to join Xploro and to help shape, define and deliver a product that will benefit children around the world.