Skiing/Riding Java or Cold Fusion Developers Needed!

Summary

Updated: February 14, 2008

• Start Date: May 2008 or earlier if you are available.

• Number of Positions: 1
• Status: Full Time Permanent
• Compensation: $60-85K per year depending on experience + 23 days paid vacation (plus other perks-see below)
• Company Phase: 10 years old, growing fast, self-sufficient & financially secure

Money & Perks | Qualifications | Job & Company Description | What's In It for You? | FAQ | Ask Questions | Apply Now

Join AlluraDirect.com Vacation Rentals & Solve a Big Mountain Travel Problem!

You’re overpaying for lodging in your favourite mountain resort, thanks to needless middleman fees.

Luckily, you don’t have to start a new business to solve this pesky problem. We’re already stamping it out!

AlluraDirect.com Vacation Rentals connects mountain travelers directly with small, independent lodging suppliers, thus bypassing a bag of extra middle agent costs on both sides. We are (in) famous for helping these two groups achieve their goals with clever technology, marketing, customer service and industry consulting.

Mountain travelers reap more value & personal service. Small independent local lodging suppliers gain freedom from big business control and costs. Everyone wins.

Join our successful & well-established company to help tens of thousands of people experience the mountain magic you already know and crave. You’ll also level the lodging business playing field by helping small independent local lodging companies succeed online and win in the highly competitive travel industry.

You'll have a direct and positive impact on the every day lives of many people and small businesses.

AlluraDirect.com’s business model is unique, powerful and effective: we are among the largest and most popular lodging web sites in Whistler, Big White and Sun Peaks, BC’s largest mountain destinations. We recently added 6 more mountain destinations to our site, where we expect to become similarly dominant within the next 3 years.

Our goal is to be one of the best and biggest mountain travel lodging sites in North America by 2013. We have been prototyping, testing and refining our business model for nearly a decade. We now want to expand our developer team to speed up implementation of the changes and new innovations we need to expand our market and client base.

If you like the idea of developing software that empowers non-technical people, solves their problems, improves their lives and opportunities and helps everyone, including our staff, have more fun in an industry you care about, consider a career with AlluraDirect.com.

Our client base, destinations and shrewd idea list are bulging. If you’re ready to grow in every respect, come and grow with us!

Compensation

• $60-85K per year depending on experience
• 20 paid vacation days + 9 legal statutory holidays + 3 Company stat holidays
• 10 day Whistler Blackcomb Edge Card (no alternative equivalent perks are offered if you are not a skier/rider). Alternatively, 2 x 5 Edge Cards can be given to share with your significant other.
• Health and dental benefits
• Generous annual professional development program (see more below)
• Profit sharing eligibility after 24 months of full time employment from June 30th

Professional Development Perks

We’re seeking obsessive learners who aren’t afraid to apply new ideas and solutions to age old problems.

To fuel your learning and experimentation habit, we have a mandatory annual professional development program.

You’ll be expected to complete the following professional certifications within 5 years of starting employment:

• Java
• Advanced Cold Fusion (based on Java technology)
• SQL

• You will be fully financially supported in an ongoing professional development.
• Your professional development courses must be taken on your personal time.
• You will attend annual international advanced Cold Fusion conferences.

Qualifications & Interests

• Currently eligible to work in Canada for as long as you please
• Object-oriented developer with strong OO design pattern aptitude/interest
• Proven Java/J2EE or Cold Fusion proficiency
• Experience with frameworks, tag and object libraries
• Experience with SQL
• Some experience with, or knowledge of, XML web services
• Bachelor of Computer Science Degree (apply even if you are graduating spring 2008!)
• Engaged in social media either personally or professionally
• Energized by learning & shrewd problem solving that makes people’s lives easier.
• Committed to mastering your skills & becoming a top-ranked Vancouver developer
• Interested in the design, coding and usability phases of application development
• A personal interest in mountain sport-related industries and lifestyle
• Energized by getting broad business experience and engineering technical business & marketing solutions.
• Excited about being a vital part of a company’s entire business development team.
• Excited by needs analysis and solution development based on real human behavior.

Job Description

Bluntly, this is not an assembly line factory job. That means that you WON'T be working on the same tiny piece of a mega project day in, and day out. Cogging in a wheel isn't in your future if you get the job.

We expect you to get right in there, from inception to implementation. That means that we expect you to become strong across all coding diciplines, and to become an extraordinary master in a few, so that you can take leadership roles in those areas.

You will gain technical experience in all areas of our site, which include: security, server side applications, e-commerce, web services, APIs, AJAX, Web 2.0 technologies, site usability, database design and development, site analytics, content management and navigation systems, community-related applications, geographical mapping and more.

In all of these areas , you will be required to:

• Over time, learn about our business category, site users and vendor clients to understand needs, constraints, competitive advantages and opportunities.
• Gather and analyze business requirements.
• Builds use case models, functional specification and testing documents.
• Contribute to the design, development, implementation, testing and maintenance of web sites and custom software applications.
• Be responsible for the support of complex software systems in the supported areas, including the web site and web-based business systems.

As your interests and skill develop over time, you will gradually take over and continue to develop a major section of our web site on your own.

Coding Language

Obviously, our site is written in Cold Fusion.

So why hire Java developers who may not know Cold Fusion?

We use advanced, object-oriented frameworks. We need object-oriented developers who can also architect software from a high level using frameworks.

Java developers have that skill.

Cold Fusion is an easy-to-learn tag-based language that uses object-oriented development frameworks. It is actually Java-based.

We use Cold Fusion because it is fast, agile, lean, efficient and extremely powerful. It also slashes development cycle time, thus increasing productivity and output. Quick implementation is vital to a small business.

Cold Fusion accomplishes in 5 lines of code what other applications would need 20 lines to achieve, which makes it lean, clean and simple.

If you're a Java programmer, you'll easily and quickly adopt and get addicted to Cold Fusion's simplicity,efficiency & quick development time.

Company Description

• Technical Products & Services: vacation rental search engine, CMS, web-based property content publishing, reservation management, payment processing, communications and marketing software for small lodging suppliers. We own our technology.
• Ski Resort Destinations: Whistler, Big White, Sun Peaks, Silver Star, Red Mountain, Panorama, Fernie, Kicking Horse, Mont Tremblant PQ.
• Years in Business: Since 1997
• Number of Properties/Lodging Suppliers: Approaching 1000
• Daily Site Users: 5000+ in ski season
• Annual Online Transaction Volume: $15M CAD in direct online transactions. We estimate an additional $5M in offline transactions .
• Number of Staff: 10 full time staff, including 2 full time, experienced senior developers. The age breakdown is as follows: 5 under 25, 4 in their early 30’s and the CEO, who is in her early 40’s!
• Financial Health: Not a start-up. We are self-sufficient and stable, with ample cash reserves.

What’s In It For You?

1 - Become a Better Developer than the Day You Arrived: Continual Professional Development & Experience-Based Learning that Will Make you Juicy Headhunter Bait

We guarantee that you’ll continually flex & develop your talent daily on a real living product, and through an aggressive and continuing professional development, mentorship and interactive business experience. Your job will demand that you master broad technical areas, including security, e-commerce, web services, technical aspects of e-marketing and more. Your skills will advance quickly in many areas, thus elevating your value in the job market.

Need proof?

Canada's largest technology companies try to recruit our software developers. So far, they've been unsuccessful ,which speaks to the quality of our work and technical environment.

2 - Powerful Playground: Advanced Development and Production Framework & Environment

Don’t be fooled by our ugly interface. We have a robust development and production environment that rivals what you’ll find at larger companies, without big company red tape. We control our own dedicated load-balanced and clustered servers and use the most recent development frameworks and versions of most software.

3 - Creative Freedom: Be a Big Part of a Small & Smart Business Team

We're a small business that does big things.

Since our entire staff is also our business development team, you'll become much more than a developer.

You’ll never be a cog in a wheel, or pigeonholed into working on a tiny portion of a massive project.

You will gain an in-depth understanding of our customers and site users. With this new powerful dimension added to your technical talent repertoire, you’ll have the freedom to design and implement innovative and user-friendly solutions using newly emerging technologies and strategies. You’ll become a vital part of a larger business development team that maps out crafty ways to help average people solve problems while having more fun. You'll also help us compete and win against much larger and richer corporations. Not only will you become a superior technical developer, but you’ll also gain invaluable understanding into human behavior that will help you design and implement better applications.

4 - Agility & Constant Evolution/Innovation: Don’t be Gagged by Bureaucracy

AlluraDirect.com is quick, agile and strives to slash business barriers. We constantly move forward and continually enhance our product, services and technology. We are unfettered by red tape and bureaucracy.

5 - Broad Business Exposure: Learn Business Basics & What it Takes to Thrive in the Real World

You’ll gain invaluable practical business experience that you won’t learn in school or in larger corporations. You’ll master the arts of prioritization, teamwork, efficiency, scalability and needs analysis. As part of a larger business development team, you’ll gain an in depth appreciation of the power of clever design and working smarter. While your technical skills will diversify and skyrocket, your practical, hands-on business experience will set you apart from your peers at all points in your career.

6 - Leadership

You’ll eventually become more specialized based on your aptitude and interests, and move on to spearhead the evolution of entire sections of our web site.

7 - Product Passion

If you’re the right person, you’ll be interested in this position because you’re also personally interested in mountain sport and travel. Merging your personal interests with your career is an ideal situation that most people never achieve in a lifetime.

8 - Product Pride !

"What Company do you work for?" ...asks someone at a party or nightclub

"I work for AlluraDirect.com" ..you say, while secretly praying that they have had a good experience if they have used our site. Sweat starts to bead on your forehead.

"Oh-I've used that site before!"

"How did it go?" ... you ask, while quietly begging to the business gods for mercy in a possible public business bludgeoning. You're now at an agonizing fork in the road. One path leads to heavenly personal pride & boasting rights, while the other leads to hellish flaming public mortification and the 3 foot long finger of blame pointing right at you!

Be prepared to own your work & be accountable, because this scenario will replay itself over and over again in your social life in all locations across the city, should you choose to work here. You will likely meet our customers in many facets of your own social life!

You’ll be working on a product used and loved by many people in your hometown. In social situations, you’ll be hard-pressed to find skiers and riders who don’t know about our web site! Working on a site that is used and embraced by your community gives your job incredible significance. It also puts direct personal pressure on your work, because you'll inevitably meet our customers face to face in social contexts

You'll have the power to choose how that conversation ends & whether you feel pride or embarassment.

Professional pride and achievement are priceless. Few people experience it in their careers. You'll experience it if you work here, knowing that that night, you may have to unexpectedly defend your work to our customers in a bar, the gym, on the bus, or any occasion where you talk to people! Our customers are everywhere and you won't know who they are.

9 - Crap-Free Work Environment & Committed Workmates

We have a simple, happy and relaxed working environment. We all get along, enjoy working together and are committed to our Company’s growth. We are here because we love our jobs. While your pals rant about office politics, you'll be talking about the exciting project you're working on and basking in the glow and fulfillment of work that generates visible and meaningful results for thousands of people AND your co-workers, the second it goes live.

10 - Opportunity

Be come part of a core group of highly innovative developers working on a product and service on the cusp of larger market expansion. We have prototyped our product for over 10 years. We now know exactly what needs to be done to expand it out across North America. We now want to expand our core developer team. We need you to help us speed things up, roll it out and keep us on the cutting edge at all times! Now’s an exciting time to get involved!

Frequently Asked Questions

Why don’t you have big glossy brochures like the other companies?

They clog up the landfills & poison the water with colored ink. Let’s face it, you just throw them out, don’t you?

Your web site is really ugly-why don’t you change your interface?

Nevertheless, don’t be fooled by it’s ratty surface appearance. This old ugly competes and wins against big company competitors. It keeps them awake at night. Under the hood, we have one of the most sophisticated platforms and development frameworks in town.

How much business rolls through that nasty looking web site?

Over $20M CAD per year and growing. We're not e-commerce weaklings. Imagine the possibilities once we give our workhorse a face lift!

Have you ever heard of Web 2.0? Why haven’t you moved your site towards it?

Guess what you’ll be working on?

How many developers do you have now?

2 of Vancouver's top ColdFusion developers + 1 intermediate object-oriented ColdFusion developer.

We're using advanced software development frameworks. We doubt anyone in town is using object-oriented design frameworks in Cold Fusion to the extent that we are and plan to in the future.

How many developers will you grow your team to & why the sudden developer group expansion?

• Immediate: 4 happy & healthy master developers who love their jobs
• Over 5 Years: 4 senior developers + 2 junior developers + 2-3 co-op students

We are growing every quickly. We also want to quickly implement new applications and upgrade existing ones, revamp our interface and expand into the USA.

We have prototyped extensively for over a decade. We know what has to be done. Our plan is backed by 10 years of real customer and product experience. We want to build a strong cohesive team of at least 4 full time developers to quickly move us to the next phase, help us fuel our growth and keep us on the front edge for decades to come.

Why aren’t you in more destinations?

We are on the cusp of breaking out North America wide. Want to help out and jump in now?

Do you have office masseuses, ping pong/pool tables or fluffy red couches for us to lounge on?

No, because that means that you’ll have to stay at work longer to achieve the same outcome. Wouldn’t you rather be skiing/riding/biking or spending time with your friends/family? We will give you great chairs, gear and creative geniuses for work mates. Also included is free beer and gourmet chips at Friday staff meetings.

If you really force us, we 'll give you wooden backscratchers for your personal use.

Do have I have to deal with customers or real people?

You don’t have to deal with customers.

You DO have to work with, respect and enjoy the company of equally smart and talented non-technical people who DEAL with our customers and who feed us all kinds of useful clues about what is working and not working on the site. We expect you to be really interested in their customer needs analysis, observations and reports. They are counting on you to engineer practical solutions that are useful and fun to use for even the most technically challenged!

Do I have to be on call?

You will be on call one weekend per month. Our developers are rarely called unless the flow of money and/or email is blocked, which impacts you and not just our customers. Since you and your team’s work will be so amazing, you won’t be worried about a wake-up call.

What is the average age of your staff?

5 of our full time and 2 of our part time staff are under 25. The rest are in their early 30’s. The CEO is the oldest at 44. Most of our staff have university degrees or are on their way to getting one. The CEO has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Immunology. No one has a degree or diploma is Stupidology, Wastonomics or Snobistry.

Will I have to train anyone?

Once you become a master, we expect you to pass it forward as it has been passed to you.

What are your goals for your employees?

Smart, healthy, happy, and financially successful….and at least 10 skiing/riding days per year.

Do I have to buy my own coffee?

Not a chance. Free coffee, creativity & achievements are the rivers of life that flow freely through our office.

How about beer and chips?

Supplied every Friday, plus other nutritional supplements via regular post work pub socials.

Can I listen to music while I work, telecommute, and dress casually?

Yes to music (via your own earphones) and dressing casually.

No to telecommuting. Sorry, we have tried it in many formats and the experiment is over for us. We move forward faster in terms of progress, results and therefore pay, when we work together. Besides, we actually like coming in to work! Some of us actually ski/ride together on weekends ;)

Are you a "green" office?

We recycle everything…including organic food waste. We avoid using paper and post-its. Most of us bike, walk or bus to work. Most of us don't buy food if we can't pronounce the ingredients on the package. We're a strange breed of business heads with a hidden hippie side.

Do you do anything for charity?

No, because we all have our own unique causes. Our job is to to ensure that you have enough personal time and money to donate to your cause, and that you are inspired to help others around you.

How to Apply

If you have made it this far, you're pretty interested!

Questions? Please contact the CEO at: sue@alluradirect.com

Ready to jump in? We can't wait to meet you!

Send the following information to the CEO at: sue@alluradirect.com

• Cover Letter
• Resume
• Work Samples/Personal Web Sites URLs/Blog URLs

All information is kept confidential.