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mirRoR Blog: Calling All Teachers

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:07:00 GMT

Today, the mirRoR blog features a guest blog post. We’ve never done that before but we think our friend Michael Kaiser-Nyman has an idea worth sharing...

mirRoR Blog: Our Current Favorite Tool: ChoiceResponse

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:51:00 GMT

Today we wanted to share a bit about one of our current favorite tools. It’s actually a small app we built ourselves called “ChoiceResponse.” It’s a very simple tool that allows you to send multiple choice emails via a bookmarklet in your browser....

mirRoR Blog: Is Your Phone Ringing at Work? It Isn't Us.

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:18:00 GMT

Last week we were chatting with a developer who said, “Oh yeah, I think I remember talking to you guys. You called me at work a few months ago, right?” to which we responded, “mirRoR, calling you at work...

mirRoR Blog: 5 Signs You're Ready For a New Rails Job

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:45:00 GMT

It’s easy to get stuck in a job that’s no longer the right fit for you. Maybe it was exciting at first, but that was years ago and the company has changed...

mirRoR Blog: Things We Love: Ruby and Sushi

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:53:00 GMT

The other day, we got to thinking about how we came to know and love the Ruby language.

mirRoR Blog: Relocating to SF: Now Is the Time

Fri, 06 May 2011 09:35:00 GMT

If you don’t live in the Bay Area, you’re probably getting tired of hearing about all the activity going on in the SF Ruby on Rails market: new Rails shops launching, new jobs, the most active Ruby meetup, and some of the most well-known Ruby conferences.

mirRoR Blog: Make Tough Decisions Early and Move On

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:33:00 GMT

Looking for a new job can be a lot like buying a car or buying a house: painful. I’m currently on the lookout for a new home, and it’s been reminding me of some good job search lessons....

mirRoR Blog: Set Sail: Your Next Rails Job Awaits!

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:32:00 GMT

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” - William G. T...

mirRoR Blog: Endangered Species: The Unemployed Rails Developer

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:29:00 GMT

As pretty much every Rails developer in the San Francisco Bay Area knows, there are tons of job openings out there right now. Unemployed Rails developers basically don’t exist...

mirRoR Blog: Specialization is for Insects

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:27:00 GMT

As you likely know, all we do at mirRoR is Ruby on Rails. We talk only with Ruby developers and fill only Ruby jobs...

Principal/Lead Software Engineer

Mon, 07 May 2012 20:43:57 GMT

Tags: Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, Manager, On-site, San Francisco, Team Member, Urban Center, VC Backed Startup

What You’ll Be Doing:

As a Principal/Lead Software Engineer, you’ll be leading and collaborating with our Principal and Senior Engineers on designing optimal system architectures. Throughout your work, you’ll share your excitement about agile development philosophy, test-driven development, and short iterations as you lead and pair with your teammates and work alongside business analysts, systems analysts, and user-experience designers. Plus, you’ll be able to unleash your intelligence as you do high-level thinking about object-oriented design and infrastructure for a site that’s growing at light speed.

Responsibilities:

Develop our infrastructure using Ruby, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and other open source technologies like Rack, RSPec, Jasmine, Cucumber, Solr, etc.
Lead the breakdown of a large, legacy Rails application into small, testable, and well-designed functional units
Actively pair with other Sr. level engineers within the team
Employ test-driven and behavior-driven development
Support continuous integration by ensuring that working branches pass all tests
Participate in daily stand-ups, sprint planners, reviews, and retrospectives

Requirements:

10+ years of software engineering experience with previous experience as a Lead or Principal engineer
Very strong foundation with object-oriented design and design patterns, and how they apply to Ruby, Java, Python, etc.
Mastery of Ruby language and Rails framework (at least 4 years of experience)
Experience with high-performance Rails applications
Innate understanding of SQL and data modeling for scalability and performance
Solid and strong XHTML/CSS/JavaScript and MVC framework experience
A fan of using and contributing to open source
Able to compare various languages and frameworks objectively
Eye for good design and ability to implement ‘pixel perfect’ UI designs
Knows agile development practices, thinks they’re awesome, and is excited to use them
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Ability to clearly articulate design ideas while being receptive to constructive criticism
Familiarity with Git version control system
Knowledge of Solr, Redis, MySQL
Experience with Sinatra, Rack, and services layer in Ruby
Previous TDD and pairing experience

The Benefits You’ll Get:

As part of our community, you’ll be entitled to a great list of benefits including (but not limited to!) medical, dental, vision, 401k, life insurance, emergency travel assistance, flex time, and continuing education stipends. Oh, and let’s not forget the snack wall and the staggering employee discount!

About Us:

If you’ve made it this far, you probably want some more background on us. Not a prob! We are an innovative, rapidly growing e-retailer that sells affordable independent designer fashion and decor. Through groundbreaking technology, social media, and customer involvement, we have not only built an ever-growing base of over 3 million unique monthly visitors, but are creating a brand that’s disrupting the world of social commerce. You’ve already seen how this is happening with our consumer-empowering Be the Buyer program, and that’s just the first iteration of what’s up our sleeve. By combining this eye for innovation with a fun-loving group of employees whose culture centers on passion, entrepreneurship, and monthly lunch cook-offs, we are furthering our current success!

Three Rails Openings in Seattle

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:18:37 GMT

Tags: Big Business, Full Time, Hybrid, Jeans & Sandals, Seattle, Team Member

These three Seattle openings are all with the same company. Read below for details of each position.

Lead Developer

Duties and Responsibilities:

Follow Factory development methodologies (a healthy blend of the best the agile world has to offer)
Write stories and specs
Produce stable, well-architected code
Lead development efforts
Occasionally wrangle some front-end code
Mentor peers
Pair-program when needed
Provide complexity- and time-based estimates for projects
Communicate well with account managers and internal stakeholders
Keep up to date with the latest technologies
Some travel may be required

Qualifications:

Experience communicating directly with both internal stakeholders and clients
5+ years of backend web development experience, including database experience
2+ years experience with the Ruby language and the Rails framework, with a mastery of the Ruby on Rails stack
Must have a strong foundation in OO programming and practices
Intermediate- to expert-level knowledge of web standards, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Experience in test driven development and agile development processes
Experience with jQuery or similar JS frameworks a plus
Familiarity with version control systems (Git preferred)

UX Front-end Developer

Absolute skillset requirements:

1-3 years experience building web and/or mobile applications
HTML/CSS, HTML5/CSS3, and JavaScript
Rails experience and development
Fluent in JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX and JSON
MVC architecture and development
Git & version control

Desired skills:

Experience with Haml and Sass (or Less)
Advanced understanding of JavaScript and AJAX Technologies
Understanding of css sprites, coding efficiently, and page speed optimization
Experience with Backbone.js

Responsibilities:

Thorough understanding of full project process from concepting through to delivery
Provide feedback on technical feasibility to account and creative team members
Key person during technical phases of prototyping
Work mainly on front-end development for websites, web apps and mobile apps.

Backend and DevOps

Requirements:

Experience with full lifecycle development in a modern dynamic language (Ruby).
Ability to create modular, object oriented code that is clear, maintainable and utilizes design patterns and other best practices.
Strong unix skills (Linux/FreeBSD/Mac OS X preferred).
Strong front-end development with HTML5, CSS, and OO Javascript with toolkits such as jQuery, Prototype, Backbone.js, etc.
Strong data modeling and database skills including experience with an RDBMS (MySQL preferred) as well as NoSQL data stores (MongoDB, Redis, Riak, HBase, etc.).
Experience with agile development methodologies including rapid prototyping, test driven development (TDD, BDD), continuous integration, etc.
Experience building dynamic websites with Rails.
Experience designing and implementing API's and service components using REST, RPC, messaging, etc.
Experience configuring web servers and application deployment environments (Apache httpd, nginx, Tomcat, Capistrano, etc.)

Education Reform on Rails

Thu, 03 May 2012 18:57:59 GMT

Tags: Boulder, Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, On-site, Team Member, Urban Center, VC Backed Startup

Location: Denver, CO

ABOUT US

We are solving real problems for K-12 education. Starting with 7,000 classrooms in the 2012-2013 school year, we will transform 100,000 classrooms by 2015. Our passion for education reform is one of the things that sets us apart; we believe kids need an environment that cultivates learning and creative problem solving. That's our true north, and it's how we make decisions about our software. We're looking for brilliant software engineers who have extensive experience working in Ruby on Rails.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Develop in RoR, JavaScript, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming
Work directly with designers and the product owner to manage requirements
Significant experience with web and/or mobile application development using a variety of languages and tools

WHY JOIN US?

We're passionate about education reform.
Pivotal Labs. All of our code was written by Pivotal. It's clean, it's current, it's good. Really good.
We're making a difference. Our platform is going into 7,000 classrooms this August.

Generalist Engineer with Rails Experience

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:16:08 GMT

Tags: Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, On-site, San Francisco, Team Member, Urban Center, VC Backed Startup

We are creating a totally new way to shop. Here's how we do it: Our clients provide us with details about their size and personal style. Once a month they are offered a fix: for a $20 styling fee we hand select 5 items using a combination of our proprietary styling algorithm and professional stylists and send it to their home. If a customer chooses to buy one or more pieces, the $20 styling fee is a credit toward their purchase.

Our clients love the service and the business is exploding. We have thousands of paying clients, business has doubled since November, will double again by September, and we will grow even faster in 2013. We just raised our Series A from a top-tier VC firm to invest heavily in scaling engineering and fulfillment, which is where you might come in.

We are building the team that is going to take us to 10x by the end of next year. We are looking for folks that get super excited about jumping in the deep end, building outstanding products, and delighting clients.

We're big fans of Continuous Deployment, Specializing Generalists, and people that know the difference between hacking together technology and consistently delivering world-class products. We like people that take their work seriously but aren't serious at work. We believe the best products are delivered when engineers are empowered to solve problems, involved in how the business works, and have a clear connection to their customer.

The engineering team is currently a data and analytics engineer, a front end engineer/designer, and a generalist engineer. We are looking for 2 more great generalist engineers, ideally with full-stack Rails experience.

Lead Developer for Market-Disrupting Startup

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:53:18 GMT

Tags: Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, Office Park, On-site, Seattle, Team Member, VC Backed Startup

Who We Are:

We are a well-funded startup building a disruptive platform that will have a dramatic impact on a wide range of labor markets. Our core team is made up of people who have built several successful tech ventures, and all of us believe our company is going to make a huge and positive difference in the world. We are based in Kirkland, Washington.

Who You Are:

You are a web development master with excellent coding skills. You take pride in your work, writing clean, maintainable code. But you also prioritize your work and build what’s necessary to accomplish the business objectives at hand. You have led project teams in the past, and this has prepared you well to lead your own small engineering organization.

You Want:

To build and run your own technical organization
To spend your time writing code, not managing lots of people
To receive meaningful equity
To build cool technology that will have a positive, global impact

You Have:

Experience leading projects with multiple team members
A GitHub account (or portfolio) that rocks
2+ Years of Ruby-on-Rails experience
6+ Years of web development experience, ideally in a startup environment
Worked on multiple large-scale deployments of high-performance websites
Understanding of web analytics, A/B testing, and agile development methods
Knowledge of Amazon Web Services (SQS, S3, EC2)
A CS degree or equivalent experience
Comfortable reading and writing SQL

Valuable Additional Skills:

Able to work with JavaScript and frameworks such as jQuery and Prototype
Experience with HTML5/CSS
Unix systems administration

Senior Rails Dev for Energetic Startup

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:43:43 GMT

Tags: Boston, Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, Office Park, On-site, Team Member, VC Backed Startup

We are seeking to add a very experienced Rails developer to our team. The ideal candidate has extensive experience using Rails to build consumer-facing web applications. He or she also considers themselves a full stack developer and is able to take on projects that include both back-end and front-end development. This a full-time position, but we would consider the right person for a contract.

Why join us? We are a small Framingham-based company (about 20 people) and we are successful and growing. You will be working in an energetic and very fun startup environment. You will learn from (and hopefully teach) other experienced Rails developers. You will also see how engineering fits together with the other pieces of an organization to create a successful business.

On the engineering team, we stay current with the latest trends in web development and Ruby communities. We also strive to use the right tool for the job. Our platform is made up of several web applications. Current technologies we use include: Rails 2.3, Rails 3, bundler, RVM, Git, Shoulda, Rack Middleware, MySQL, MongoDB, Sinatra, Rails Metal, CoffeeScript, Spree, and RabbitMQ.

Not only will you play a key role in building the future of our company, but you will also play a key role in deciding how the engineering team evolves as we grow.

Revolutionizing Online Stores

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:37:08 GMT

Tags: Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, Manager, On-site, San Francisco, Urban Center, VC Backed Startup

What we're working on:

Our mission is to make regular people into kickass online merchants. We are a community of over 11,000 online stores including clothing companies, bands, crafters, artists, designers, and other creatives all over the world. And unlike other store platforms, we connect everything into a big marketplace where you can shop across all the stores at once. In short, it's "Tumblr for online stores".

Why we're awesome:

We're a super small team of 6 people with big investors and a huge opportunity. Most online store tools suck and we're building the one that doesn't. The work you do will empower thousands of real people and businesses every day and facilitate millions of dollars in transactions. We love what we do, we have a sweet office in The Mission, and we laugh a lot at work. All while supporting an extremely grateful community of indie business all over the world. It doesn't get any better than that.

We are hackers and love great code + pair programming. We recently upgraded to Rails 3, Resque, Devise, and a CI server to keep the stack fresh and up to date. But we also care deeply about the actual product, user experience and the way our customers use our software. P.S. We have a shipment of 5 Hour Energy delivered every month.

Who we're looking for:

You should be a strong test-driven Ruby on Rails developer with at least 3 years experience. You should be able to crank out solid code quickly and meet deadlines. You should be friendly, responsible, and easy to work with. You should be used to testing all your code while still adhering to the mantra "Done is better than perfect".

Compensation details:

Competitive salary (we're funded, remember?)
Early employee equity
Healthcare
Apple gear

High Volume eCommerce Platform

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:02:59 GMT

Tags: Big Business, Bootstrapped, Full Time, Hybrid, Jeans & Sandals, Office Park, On-site, Philadelphia, Team Member, Urban Center

Who We Are Looking For:

We are currently looking for a talented programmer with Ruby / Rails experience to help with the rollout of eCommerce related functionality for our site. This would involve the opportunity to build, test, develop, and deploy significant features to a high volume, fully custom eCommerce platform. The developer would also be exposed to the inner workings of a technology driven online retailer from the ground up and could gain valuable experience.

We were founded by a team of software developers so you will work side by side with the founders of the company to identify key functionality and features, wireframe, develop, and deploy to the production site. If the following description sounds like you, you are going to love being a part of our team.

About You:

You have strong passion for high-quality software and the ability to deliver product in an informal, agile environment. You prefer a whiteboard brainstorming session to written specifications. You don’t require management oversight to produce results. Once you have some direction, you take responsibility for the work at hand and have the initiative, imagination, and motivation to get it done.

You like to learn from others, and to share knowledge and best practices. You have excellent deductive reasoning, problem solving, and decision-making skills. When it’s necessary to compromise to meet a deadline, you’re confident you can make the right decisions to achieve a balanced result. You have a positive attitude with excellent interpersonal/communication skills.

You’re happy working both independently and with others in a multi-team setting. You’re not comfortable unless you’re at the top of your game. When you’re not at work, you’re tinkering with new technologies or catching up on ideas from industry thought leaders. You might even have your own blog and/or tinker on open source projects in your spare time. You’re passionate about developing rich interactive web applications on the RoR platform.

Requirements:

2-4+ years professional software development experience
2+ years experience developing web applications (ideally with Ruby / Rails)
Expert SQL DB skills (we use Postgresql)
Strong HTML / XHTML, CSS and JavaScript
Experience with source code control (we use Git)
Detail oriented
Self-motivated
Strong communication skills

Nice To Haves:

eCommerce experience
Current or past motorcycle ownership / riding experience

Online Display Ads on Rails

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:47:51 GMT

Tags: Full Time, Hybrid, Jeans & Sandals, San Francisco, Team Member, Urban Center, VC Backed Startup

We are leading the creative resurgence of online display advertising. We are an independent company that was founded in 2006 with headquarters in New York and offices throughout the United States and Europe. The company placed #76 on the 2011 Inc 500 list with a three-year revenue growth-rate of +3,064 percent. We are a profitable company headquartered in NYC with a small engineering team in SF that is looking to expand. Display advertising is growing faster than any other segment of the market and that is what we do, and we do it faster than anyone else at a lower cost.

We have an eclectic team including a restaurateur, a martial arts expert, a Starcraft hero, a hard core surfer and snow boarder, and a competitive water skier. We travel to NYC twice a year where we lovingly debate what to do with funny domain names we happen to own.

The technical pieces of our business run on the frameworks Ruby on Rails (v3.1) and node.js. We use Mysql, Redis, and a ton of log files for data storage. We try to avoid buzz words, but it isn't easy in a job posting, so here are some more: html5, jquery, haml, sass, coffeescript, rspec, ruby 1.9.3, asset pipeline, underscore, backbone, wkhtmltopdf.

We could post our Gemfile and other various initializers and test suite, but it really is better to chat over a drink or coffee. We would like to find a lead engineer or architect that enjoys collaboration and can guide us in the right direction. We are also seeking engineers that are passionate about software development and want to work at a small company with exposure to all aspects of application development and maintenance.

We offer competitive pay, equity, bonuses, health, dental, etc.. The company has a lot of room to grow. If we want to work with each other we will be honest with you and make it mutually beneficial. If you are amazing at what you do, we could consider part-time, remote development, or contracting, but you will need to come out to San Francisco at least one week a quarter.

VP of Engineering for Chicago startup

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:47:29 GMT

Tags: Chicago, Full Time, Jeans & Sandals, On-site, Urban Center, VC Backed Startup

About Us:

We offer CPGs a new, effective and innovative way to market their products: selling direct to consumers before they ever reach the store. Google likes to talk about the Zero Moment of Truth. We are the only company that actually enables a digital, pre-trip sale. We are located in downtown Chicago in a refurbished Swedish pancake factory, and are well-funded by Silicon Valley VCs.

How We Work:

Our deals on grocery items are offered online and on retailers' websites. Once a consumer has bought a deal, it's loaded to the consumer's chosen retailer loyalty card (SuperValu, Lowes Foods, etc.). The consumer then heads straight to the product at the store, ignoring the competition, and pays nothing at checkout because they've already paid via our platform. The transaction clears through the normal manufacturer's coupon channels. The brand secures a customer and the retailer secures a trip. The cost is comparable to normal coupon campaigns, but the efficacy is far greater.

The VP of Engineering We're Looking For:

This is an opportunity to join the YCS11 company that was voted No. 1 by its 62 peers at the end of the summer. We’re looking for a VP of Engineering. The right candidate will have designed, launched and scaled a web app. This person will be the technical extension of the co-founders. They will lead the development team. But they should be comfortable getting their hands dirty. They should like to code -- they will get ample opportunity to do so. We aren't looking for a white-gloved project manager. We pay well. We offer serious equity and a full slate of benefits including health insurance and a 401k. We have a Killerspin ping pong table and an employee who can beat you on one leg. For the ping pong spectators, we stock the finest beer in Chicago. The job is in Chicago. We’re willing to relocate the right candidate.

Our Stack: our current codebase is Rails 3.1, deployed to Heroku. We have native iOS and Android apps in the works.