Location: Chicago, IL (River North)
URL: www.inventables.com
Rails gig to drool over…
If you are looking for a standard IT job move on
to the next posting.
If you are looking for a team of smart, engaged, passionate people who are changing the world read on…
The Project:
Our web app helps companies you’ve heard of like Microsoft X-Box, Colgate Toothpaste, Wrigley Gum, and Mercedes-Benz make better products for consumers. It does this by connecting our customers that make consumer products to our vendors that make innovative materials and technologies like gel magnets, tension sensing rope, and stainless steel yarn. Think of us like a dating site for technology seekers and sellers. The internet makes lots of information available but it’s really challenging and time consuming to source new materials. Our mission is to make it SIMPLE to source and sell these cool technologies globally.
The first phase will be taking our current web app written in ASP and doing a re-write in Ruby on Rails using TDD. The reason we are doing the re-write is we want to clean up the code base and set it up to quickly make improvements customers care about without breaking legacy code.
The second phase will be to make improvements we’ve identified need to happen by observing our customer behavior.
The third phase will be to build a sister application to our current app – we’ll tell you more about that later.
The Challenges:
We’ll get into the details later but at a high level:
1. Interface interface interface – If it’s not obvious we don’t have a solution – we need to make it super simple.
2. Scale – How do we get massive scale with our application?
3. Speed – Our stated goal is <0.5 seconds per page
4. Machine learning – Our users need to find things they don’t know to search for
5. Network Effect – We have it and need to put fuel on the fire
The Approach:
Agile. We’re drinking the Kool-Aid here. We’ve worked in a waterfall approach before but we’re not interested in taking that approach anymore. We believe in failing often to succeed sooner and throwing away code that sucks. Our technical leader taught Agile at Object Mentor so we’re not just saying Agile—we mean it.
The Team:
We believe the best software is written by intentionally small teams that know how to make the impossible possible. The technology team is being led by David Chelimsky if you don’t know him check out rspec and read about Object Mentor or his talk at Rails Conf. He’s an agilist that is now working with Ruby on Rails using TDD. The vision for the project is coming from Zach Kaplan our founder and CEO. He’s a Mechanical Engineer that leads our product development with an appreciation for technology and business. He’s been invited to speak at TED as well as other Keynotes and speaks for us when CNN, NBC, Forbes, etc. call for interviews. The sophisticated math that will be in our app’s secret sauce is coming from Klaus Georg. Klaus only got 1 wrong on his SAT’s and majored in math. You get the idea.
You:
You’ll be our 13th full time employee so we’re looking for an animal. You have a passion for the web development, are self motivated, and enjoy working in a user-focused, highly intelligent, entrepreneurial environment. You have at least 3 years with hand-coded web development, with a MINIMUM of one year developing Ruby on Rails. You know how to build web applications from scratch:
- Database schema design
- Application architecture
- Javascript, CSS, AJAX
- Experience with cross browser user interface design
- Linux (Apache, MySQL, Postfix, etc)
- Journalism major, CS Degree, drop out… we don’t care because you’re awesome
- You’re drinking the Kool-Aid with agile development, TDD, version control
- Need to be good at Wii baseball, Mario Kart, or Bowling – yes we have a Wii.
What you get:
- We’re pay competitively based on experience
- Health Insurance at no additional cost to you
- Options Program
- Exploration budget – to keep you creative
- Tell us the tools you need Mac or PC & software
- Fuel: Breakfast, snacks, drinks
- Massages – yes we have a massage chair
- Young fast-paced work environment
- Headphones
- Nintendo Wii
Our Values:
Honesty and integrity – We are honest with each other, vendors, customers, and honest with ourselves. We acknowledge things as they are, not as we wish them to be.
A commitment to rational thinking – Decisions are based on logic and reason instead of emotions or intuition.
Responsibility – We take ownership over the outcome. We share the entrepreneurial spirit and play to win.
Excellence – As individuals we have higher expectations for ourselves than Inventables has for us. We are committed to personal excellence and self improvement
Curiosity – We are curious people that are always learning about new things and investigating new areas: everything from buying novel products at the grocery store to exploring new information technology.
How to Apply:
This is an in-house position, so please only apply if you are in the Chicago area or willing to relocate. Please fill out this survey to apply (http://inventables.wufoo.com/forms/lead-developer-application/). All surveys are reviewed in person. If you have any questions please email jobs at inventables dot com.
To apply: http://inventables.wufoo.com/forms/lead-developer-application/