4 CTOs Tell Us What they Look for in a Developer

If you’re in the running for a developer job at a great company, having the CTO in your corner can’t hurt.

We talked to four CTOs to discover the qualities and qualifications they look for when vetting prospective team members. (Humility, creativity and open-source experience is a winning combination!)

Here’s what the CTOs had to say:

Rob Imbeault, CTO at Assent Compliance Inc.: “We are looking for someone full of energy and initiative who can get excited about giving us their ideas -- we try to foster that as much as we can. We want devs who are as excited as we are. We like the ‘I can do anything spirit’ without any of the conceit. We always inject humor in an interview as it serves to help the applicant be him or herself as well as being able to measure culture fit as we do tend to have fun at the office.”

Yoav Shapira, CTO at Happier, Inc.: “If someone's contributed to a significant open-source project, something at Apache, that's impressive. If someone has the character to deal with uncertainty, to take risks, to contribute in multiple ways, I dig that. I want them to be confident, based on past achievements ideally, but not arrogant. They have a hobby -- something they're passionate about -- which is not work. I don't want someone who just codes all day, every day.”

Adam MacDonald, CTO at Foursum: “For me, experience means very little. I've hired high school students that write more elegant code than I ever did. I look for candidates that are willing to challenge everything and who can work well independently in a flat organization. Most importantly though, they have to take pride in their work and be focused on building an amazing product. Those who contribute to open-source projects always earn some bonus points.”

Martin Longo, CTO at Demandbase: I look for an engineering candidate that has given thought to how to leverage his/her technical skills in such a way that they have an impact on problems that are confronting our society today. Some of the characteristics I look for in candidates are confidence, but not to the point of being ego-centric. I also look for humble people who can develop creative solutions to difficult problems. I look for someone who is open-minded, a team player and always seeking new challenges. They don't always have to be the smartest person in the room. We also look for experience using and/or contributing to open-source frameworks, cloud-based architectures, WebOps, Hadoop, RESTFUL web services, Amazon AWS, NoSQL databases and big data. I also prefer they have test-driven development as part of their core DNA - someone that fully embraces agile software development best practices.