Employment Opportunities
The Independent Traveler, Inc., is publisher of travel Web sites including Cruise Critic, the largest cruise site of its
kind, reaching over five million unique visitors each year. The Independent Traveler, Inc. is a subsidiary of TripAdvisor,
the largest travel community in the world and an operating company of Expedia, Inc. We offer a rewarding and enjoyable
entrepreneurial environment with opportunities for professional development and growth, competitive salary and comprehensive
benefits. We are located in central New Jersey, near Princeton. To apply for one of the following job openings, please email your resume and cover letter to jobs@cruisecritic.com. Due to the volume of e-mails we receive, we are unable to respond to all inquiries.
Cruise Critic does not hire staff to work onboard ships. Please contact cruise lines directly for information about cruise ship jobs.
Current Opportunities
Software Engineer
Product Manager
Brand Marketing Specialist
Position:Software Engineer – Travel Web Sites
Location: Pennington, New Jersey – (near Princeton, NJ)
Education Required: Bachelors
Experience Required: 5-7 Years
Relocation Provided: To be determined
We are a growing, dynamic and fun company, seeking a highly motivated and experienced PHP/LAMP developer to join our software development team.
The ideal candidate is highly motivated, passionate about new web technologies, and will enjoy working closely with our product development, content and marketing teams to development new features for our Web sites. This position requires being able to communicate well with both technical and non-technical staff, be committed to delivering quality work on an aggressive schedule, and must be able to function independently as well as part of a collaborative team.
Required Skills
- 5-7 years server side web development in LAMP, PHP 4.x OR 5.x multi-tiered environment
- Ability to write code quickly and accurately
- Object-oriented development and design patterns, rapid build and release cycles are a must
- Must document code faithfully and take good coding practices seriously
- Experience with version control software such as SVN or CVS
- MySQL and RDBMS proficiency; Microsoft SQL a plus
- JavaScript / DHTML programming experience
- Strong object-oriented programming skills and design pattern knowledge
- vBulletin and Cold Fusion knowledge a plus
Education
Bachelor’s degree from a four-year
college or university
Position:Product Manager
Are you passionate about travel? Do you love developing great online user experiences, finding creative solutions to problems and contributing to a team working on an industry-leading website? If so, we would like to talk to you about joining our Product Development team.
Cruise Critic is hiring an experienced Product Manager to work in our Pennington, NJ office. The ideal candidate will use his or her knowledge of online media and user experience to create robust products that support our mission to help people plan the best cruise vacations and share their experiences with other cruisers. The candidate will be an innovator who understands how to craft a vision, define products, and drive concepts from planning to implementation. Areas of responsibility include core website experiences such as Deck Plans and Find a Cruise.
What You'll Do:
- Identify opportunities to enhance the user experience and drive consumer engagement.
- Manage products throughout their lifecycle, from planning to launch.
- Develop use cases and business requirements for new website enhancements.
- Research and analyze performance indicators across key traffic sources with the goal of enhancing the user experience and meeting business objectives.
- Collaborate with design and engineering in creating product improvements and experiences.
- Research, troubleshoot, diagnose and recommend solutions to increasingly complex business or technical problems.
- Ensure quality assurance testing is performed prior to launch of new features.
- Assist in managing prioritization of new website enhancements and bug/fixes.
- Monitor key conversion metrics and A/B tests to support continual optimization of the product and business plan.
What We Seek:
- 3+ years of comparable Internet product management experience.
- Bachelor’s degree from a four-year college or university.
- Entrepreneurial passion and innovative mindset.
- Must love to travel; experience in the travel industry a plus.
- Strong technical and technical backgrounds.
- Strong problem solving, analytic, and decision-making skills.
- Demonstrated consumer focus.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
- High attention to detail.
- Ability to meet deadlines and effectively manage multiple projects at a time.
- Proven creative problem solving and innovative mindset.
- A desire to work in a fast-paced, results-driven environment with varied responsibilities.
- Ability to work on a team as well as independently.
- Sense of humor.
The ideal candidate sits comfortably at the intersection between business, technology and user experience, with experience in at least one, passion for all three, and fluency with practitioners in all. In addition, he or she will demonstrate the following competencies:
- Flexible and open to change and new information; adapts behavior and work methods accordingly.
- Recognizes own strengths and weaknesses; pursues self-development; seeks feedback.
- Exhibits integrity though fair and ethical behavior toward others and a demonstrated sense of corporate responsibility and commitment.
- Treats colleagues and partners with respect: considers and responds appropriately to the needs, feelings, and capabilities of different people.
- Acknowledges mistakes, learns from those events and is able to move forward productively.
- Ability to balance time to market and make the right trade-offs along the way.
- Ability to express facts and ideas in a clear, convincing and organized manner.
- Excellent business judgment; always considers the relevance/impact of each decision on the business.
Position:Brand Marketing Specialist
We’re looking for a marketing specialist to increase brand awareness for our three travel sites – Cruise Critic, Family Vacation Critic and IndependentTraveler.com. The Brand Marketing Specialist will work closely with external clients and partners to identify opportunities and create effective campaigns to promote brand awareness and increase interaction with our brands. This role will also help to identify non-traditional opportunities to promote the brand and encourage Cruise Critic members - our loyal fans - to evangelize the brand. The Brand Marketing Specialist will work alongside the PR, SEO/SEM and email marketing teams to promote our sites.
Responsibilities include:
- Develop and implement strategies to promote the brand
- Manage day-to-day activity of marketing projects
- Work with clients and partners to implement marketing projects
- Identify new opportunities
- Handle day-to-day activities for marketing projects
- Track and report on effectiveness of campaigns
- Ensure consistent messaging and branding
Hiring requirements:
- Minimum 4-6 years marketing experience
- Good project management skills
- Ability to meet deadlines and manage multiple tasks
- Excellent communication skills
- Degree in marketing or business development preferred
- Sound understanding of the principals of marketing
- Good copywriting skills
- Creative and innovative
- Positive attitude and commitment to the role
- Able to interpret business goals and apply them to marketing tactics
- Understanding of online and offline marketing tactics and technologies
- Good attention to detail and quality of work Ability to adapt and learn new techniques and technologies
- Ability to collaborate with colleagues, across all depts.
- Team player who supports other members of the team to achieve department goals
- Ability to work well with team members, other departments and external clients
The Independent Traveler, Inc., is publisher of travel Web sites including Cruise Critic, the largest cruise site of its kind, reaching over five million unique visitors each year. The Independent Traveler, Inc. is a subsidiary of TripAdvisor, the largest travel community in the world. We offer a rewarding and enjoyable entrepreneurial environment with opportunities for professional development and growth, competitive salary and comprehensive benefits. We are located in central New Jersey, near Princeton.
Primary Location
United States-New Jersey-Pennington
Organization
Independent Traveler and Cruise Critic
