[wplug-jobs] Front End Developers, or, JavaScript is The New Hotness

[Roland Hess]

Hi All -

Unlike many folks who post jobs here, I've actually been to a WPLUG meeting or two! I'm not a recruiter, but a team lead (and the head of development within the technology space I'm going to outline below) who is tired of recruiters giving long lists of tech and keywords to find exactly the wrong people for me.

Anyway, here's the deal. The company that I work for (we bill ourselves as a "boutique consulting firm") is looking to build a team of front-end developers to assist a large, regional health insurer (you get two guesses) in the implementation of what has turned out to be a pretty cool Service Oriented Architecture-based revamp of their web portals. We are looking for people with a decent knowledge of HTML(5)/CSS(3), but more importantly strong JavaScript skills. These new applications concentrate a lot of their processing and logic within the JavaScript that gets delivered to the browser. I've worked on a number of these applications now, and not only it is a cool concept that ends up working really well, but it is fun too. Primary work would take place in a large office building downtown, and you would be working with a team of consultants and full time employees to implement robust front-ends written in HTML/CSS/JavaScript that make use of the Dojo framework, a modular grid-based layout system, and a custom set of widgets built by some really good devs.

The team is slated to be a flex team that we have available to a variety of projects. We see the need for this style of developer on the increase, and want to end up as the provider of choice as large companies adopt the SOA model. While I cannot guarantee it, I think that the probably of working on multiple projects (as opposed to a single, time-limited engagement) is very high.

The problem is that there aren't a lot of what we consider "Enterprise Grade" JavaScript developers floating around, for obvious reasons. People who are seriously trained in IT concepts generally don't end up writing JavaScript. Most people who learn JavaScript pick it up ad-hoc, and don't have a good background in OOP or development principles, etc.

Does this sound interesting to you?

Here's a "must have" list for this team:
- Must be willing and able to fit into a corporate, business casual environment and pass background check/drug test to work inside the health insurance industry
- Able to work in person dahntahn
- Demonstrated proficiency in some kind of object-oriented language: Java, C++ (God bless you), Python and of course JavaScript (haters gonna hate)
- Be able to write basic JavaScript
- Able to sit around and jaw intelligently with formally trained developers about development stuff and not look silly
- Have done some web development within any architecture
- At least a passing flirtation with the notion that JavaScript is not a ghetto language
- Willingness to learn what we consider best practices in HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript development
- Be quick to pick up new languages and frameworks on the fly
- Be a Smart Person Who Gets Things Done (per Joel Splosky)

You'll have an easier time joining the team if you:
- Have expert-level JavaScript skills, duh (i.e. you already knew half the stuff in Resig's JavaScript Ninja book before you read it)
- Have experience with Service Oriented Architecture, including RESTful web services
- Have experience with the Dojo JavaScript framework (the asynch-loading version)
- Have some kind of IT or IS-related degree. I don't personally consider this a requirement (I don't have this myself and it's never been a problem for me), but you have to bring strong dev skills to make the check-writers feel comfortable if you don't.
- Can carry on a conversation with a non-technical person and not have them slowly back away, avoiding sudden movements

The company I work for is called SDLC Partners. I'm sure you can check them out in various places on the Internets. Check glassdoor.com for Consultant II salaries. Like most places, some people like working here, and some people don't. I like it. Incidentally, our main website was hacked over the weekend (shame), and we've switched hosting providers. Why should you care? If you visit our site via Chrome, you'll get a security warning until they re-crawl. Brilliant public relations for a tech firm.

Just respond to this email if you would like to ask any specific questions or get some more detailed information. Hopefully there's nothing flame-worthy in this message.

Cheers

D. Roland Hess
Senior Consultant
SDLC Partners
rhess at sdlcpartners.com