Web Developers and Web Designers
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The engineering department at Anchor is building the analytics
capabilities, internal systems, cloud infrastructure, deployment
tooling, and operations practices that will be needed to take the
company to the next level.
These things all need front-ends. It goes without saying that the web is
the platform for bringing new products to market, but we're a hosting
company; most of our staff are operations-focused and our customers are
too. What they really want are better tools to manipulate
infrastructure. And even though Real Sysadmins™ prefer command-line
tools (we build those too) there's still the need to cleanly present and
visualize information, and the web is the place to do that.
Haskell is the working language for internal development; the benefits
of type safety, resilience when refactoring, and stability over time
added to the power of functional programming has already paid dividends.
An open question is how far we can push strongly-typed functional
programming out to the edge. JavaScript is unavoidable browser-side, but
does it need to be written by hand? The plethora of alt-js
implementations clearly say “no!”, but _they_ all seem to force you into
contortions. If you're going to be working in something other than
JavaScript, then why not a real language? Having the codebase be common
on both sides of the network would really be something; are haste or
ghcjs up to the challenge? It's an exciting time.
We have every intention of changing the hosting industry to make
developing applications — and operating them at scale — easier for
people facing massive growth. Interested in helping?
Requirements
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A solid knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS is a prerequisite,
obviously. Experience with — and hatred of — a number of different
server-side frameworks (hack 'n slash PHP, enterprisey JSP, hipster RoR,
unmaintainable PyThings, etc) is necessary to give you an appropriately
jaded outlook on just how hard the web problem is.
Understanding (or at least strong opinions about) how to build sites
where content and presentation, design and implementation are separated
is paramount. Can your designers make it beautiful without needing to
run the entire stack? Can your systems developers improve performance
without needing to run the website to find out if it works?
Exposure to the harsh realities of IT operations and experience of the
thrill of Linux systems administration will stand you in good stead.
Knowledge of the history, progress, and problems in configuration
management will be helpful. Familiarity with open source development
practices, and the ability to tolerate other people refactoring your
code is something we'll want you to demonstrate. Experience programming
in Haskell would be a definite asset.
We need to see a track record of working well in the open (regardless of
language or project). Good documentation is as important as good code,
and command of written English is necessary both to collaborate with
your peers and to describe and promote your results.
A Bachelor's in science, engineering, or computational biology will be
well thought of. Your specific field of study doesn't matter, but how
you've used computing to solve problems in your chosen field does. A
degree in engineering will be a distinct plus. An undergraduate degree
in computer science will not be held against you (much).
Applying
--------
Anchor Systems, based in Sydney Australia, has successfully been
providing managed hosting and infrastructure to clients around the world
for almost 15 years. The critical difference in the service we offer our
customers often boils down to providing operations expertise and
infrastructure configuration balancing the short term needs to get a new
installation running with the long term imperatives of security,
scalability, and flexibility.
If you're interested in applying, send a PDF copy of your CV to