Ruby on Rails Developer

San Francisco, CA

We are looking for a motivated, talented web developer with a solid Ruby on Rails and Javascript background that can work on the full stack (front-end to back-end) to join our client's engineering team.

The role:

Your first project will be a semantic content syndication product that they are scaling to serve millions of page views per day. The project leverages bleeding-edge technologies to deliver relevant content across a wide network of partner sites. Performance is king on this project, so if you don*t know it already, you'll be learning about optimization in JavaScript, HTTP, Ruby, and Tokyo Tyrant.

Additionally, you'll collaborate with a crack team of Rails programmers on apps that create and distribute instructional content. They're building tools to solve some pretty fascinating, challenging problems, such as how to determine which how-to topics to produce, how to make video creation easier, and how get eyeballs on the videos once they're live. Whether you're interested in high-traffic, consumer-facing sites or the gritty details of our back-end infrastructure, they have got a plethora of projects ready for you. Regardless of what you're working on, you'll always be deeply involved in the decisions that shape all the company products.

What we*re looking for:

* Experience with at least one production-level, high-traffic web application
* Advanced knowledge of JavaScript, AJAX, and client/server interaction
* Proficiency with cross-browser CSS and HTML
* Understanding of scaling techniques such as caching, database query optimization, and asynchronous/background job queues

Bonus points for:

* Rails experience
* Writing a cross-domain JavaScript application
* Deep knowledge of HTTP (e.g., when to use what response codes, how cache headers work, etc.)
* Experience with any NoSQL database.
* App deployment to the cloud (Amazon, Rackspace, Heroku, etc.)
* Knowledge of a non-Rails Ruby web framework, especially Sinatra
* Extensive experience with Unix (Linux mostly)
* Testing first. Mega points for RSpec and/or Cucumber

The team:

Our client's engineering team practices a casual, agile development methodology. They have daily stand-up, pair program, and usually release on a weekly basis. But they're never dogmatic: They believe flexibility is key to their success. Sometimes pairing isn't the best approach, and sometimes it's best to release every other week. Our client keeps work schedules sustainable, and do their best to plan releases so that they're always fresh as daisies, ready and able to make smart decisions. They also take having fun in the office very seriously. Ping-pong, the imbibing of brewed malt beverages, building their own "cornhole boards" -- we promise, you'll like them.