Sometimes, it's about the people - Perl developer in West London

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 Ref: OSC303
 West London, UK (see more)
 Inline with experience
 Permanent

It can get a little repetitive writing job ads for Perl Developer positions. Fundamentally, what have we even got to talk about here? Well…

You can talk about the specific technologies being used. Obviously, we have Perl. Most places (including this client) are using Moose or Moo, DBIx::Class, PSGI and Plack. You’re hoping for some skills suggestive of sensible DevOps tooling (Chef and AWS in this case), some kind of messaging or job queue for companies at any sort of scale (Gearman), and perhaps one or two interesting pieces of technology you’ve not used before (Varnish, Solr, neural networks here).

You’re going to want to know the company is growing, successful, and well-financed, all of which this particular company is – you’ve probably heard of them, and you may well have used their services.

But what you don’t generally get from a job ad is any feeling about what it’s like to work at the company, day in, and day out. Who are your colleagues? When you need help untangling the FoobarWidget module, are they going to be sweet, helpful, and switched on, or are they going to grumble that you’ve asked them questions? Is your project manager a megalomaniac, or someone who’ll thoughtfully work through requirements with you, carefully taking on board your ideas?

Here is what I can tell you about this particular client: two of my favourite colleagues from one of my favourite jobs as a developer work there, and are trying to hire people who will reinforce their company culture. They’re kind, quiet, and highly competent Perl developers who I can personally attest to being a joy to sit next to, day in and day out. While I’ve not worked with their product manager, I’ve met him a few times, and he’s highly switched on with a deep respect for his development team.

So that’s it, in a nutshell. Your average Perl development role, but with a personal recommendation from me that your colleagues are great people, and that I’d be surprised if you didn’t enjoy your time there.

Skills and Experience

At a minimum:

  • 4 or more years commercial experience with web-based Perl projects
  • Strong grasp of OO Perl, preferably using Moose or Moo
  • Comfortable writing your SQL by hand, or with DBIx::Class
  • Familiar with Perl’s testing tools and Test::More
  • Know your way around a Linux (or Unix) system
  • Experience using VCS, preferably git
  • Conscientious with a great attention to detail

You’ll cause significant excitement if you’re also familiar with any of:

  • ElasticSearch, Solr, Lucene, or some other heavy-weight search engine
  • Happy to work with templating systems, especially Template::Toolkit
  • Previous work history with classified or specialist ads
  • A fundamental understanding of web-servers: Varnish, nginx, PSGI/Plack, Apache etc
  • Knowledge of spidering technologies
  • Cloud-deployment, with AWS preferred
  • Infrastructure from data / Modern DevOps tooling, Chef, Ansible, Puppet, etc
  • Distributed queueing or messaging, like Gearman, ActiveMQ, and so on
  • Not scared by utf8, and a reasonable understanding of the fundamentals of Unicode

About the Client

The client is always on the look-out for bright, driven, and web-savvy people who want to help them build high-quality products that help people in their day-to-day lives. Their main office is in West London, but they’ve got remote teams spread out around Europe and the wider world. Their focus is on human-centered success - they describe their culture as being diverse, open and informal. They want developers who will treat their products as if they were their own.

Benefits

  • Strong salary - a proper London living wage
  • All employees should have an opportunity to be owners too, so there are stock options
  • Company-matched pension
  • People with (or who want!) families are welcome, and there’s paid maternity and paternity leave
  • There are options for working from home, and flexible hours, dependent on role
  • Beautiful offices with a sunny outdoor area, an awesome location, free healthy food, a great coffee machine, and table tennis
  • At least three social happenings every month; try out your Go-Kart skills, or just come join the team at the pub

This job is no longer officially open, but see below for how to register your interest in roles like this, and be told as if the company reopens hiring.

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