Location: Frisco, TX
URL: http://www.wedontplayfair.com/
https://farstar.backpackit.com/pub/1472294
The Gig (in short)
We’re looking for an extremely knowledgeable Technical Director to lead our web app development team. This is a full-time, on-site, directorial position, but you are expected to have earned the role by being more knowledgeable and experienced than our current development team. (And they’re pretty crackerjack already.)
What we’re looking for in you:
- You’ve been a front-line developer and architect. You know what developers are capable of, you know how long things really take, and you know how much time asking the right questions can save.
- You have a favorite programming language. Not the first one you learned, but the fifth one, the one that finally made sense after all those years of drudgery with the others. Sure, all the others still have their place, but for 90% of your tasks you can rely on PHRubavispkellthon++. (Bonus points if you identify all 7 languages concatenated there.)
- You care about beautiful, solid code. You care about MVC, about best practices, about developers loving development. You want the HTML semantic, the JavaScript unobtrusive, and the source commented. Where we currently don’t meet standards, you will hold our feet to the fire on them. You version control.
- You must know PHP, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Flex, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and Subversion. You’ll be choosing the tools we use in the future, but you must know these languages and tools intimately enough to work with our current projects.
- You care about the entire project. When you were a front-liner, you kept pushing back your assignments with suggestions on how it could better fit the intentions and experience of the whole project.
- You can talk to clients, gain their trust, assuage their fears, and earn their respect. They will invite you to their parties.
- You can talk to developers, gain their trust, assuage their fears, and earn their respect. They will invite you to their raids.
What we actually expect you to do:
- Lead development of multiple projects at once, including deciding what languages/platforms to use, managing actual development, providing architectural oversight, and launching and the post-launch project monitoring
- Assess current and past projects to recommend and lead technical improvements (“This should use PostgreSQL… that should never have been on Rails…”)
- Hold the ultimate responsibility for platform and technical choices: when an app goes down, “Ruby doesn’t scale” won’t be an acceptable answer
- Answer (be held accountable) to the clients and to other internal management about project status
Note that we haven’t listed “4 years [language] experience” or “8 years project management experience”. That’s because we understand how this really works. Either you’re a badass who knows their stuff and has the chops to lead a team, or you’re not. Numbers won’t show that. The management and development teams will be grilling you mercilessly, so please apply only if you see yourself as a team leader, experienced developer, and great communicator.
How to Apply
Please send your resume, portfolio, or whatever else you think will help us understand the unique butterfly that is you to: talent@wedontplayfair.com. We get lots and lots of applicants, so please put “Technical Director” in the subject line.
About Farstar
Farstar, located right off the Tollway in historic downtown Frisco, Texas, is an interactive marketing firm that focuses on producing customer acquisition, retention and loyalty results for its clients through a blend of technology, creativity, psychology and strategy. (And sometimes hypnosis. But don’t tell anyone.)
To apply: Send a resume or somesuch to talent@wedontplayfair.com