G'day:
Update
This role has been filled.
I mean literally: come work with me. Here.
We're expanding our dev team, and I'm looking for a new dev to join us.
This could be a really good opportunity for someone doing CFML development who would like to move away from CFML and pick up a new language, whilst being paid to do so. You know how I shifted from CFML to PHP several years ago? The opportunity to shift to a new language whilst in my same role was the best thing that ever happened to my in my dev career (even if it was just to PHP, it was still excellent to pick up another language professionally). Well: second best after the initial opportunity to shift from systems engineering to development in similar circumstances. Seriously: even if yer in a solid / comfortable CFML dev role now, think about this.
We currently have a CFML app running on Lucee and the CFWheels framework, and over the next coupla years we are going to be porting this to Kotlin on the back-end; and after that my plan is to re-implement the front-end part of it as its own front-end app using vue or react or angular or whatever the flavour of the month is for client-side app development by then.
The CFML app will be running in parallel during this time; we will be shifting pieces of its functionality to the new back-end in a piecemeal fashion, so we do need both solid CFML skills for that side of things, and either pre-existing Kotlin knowledge, or just a desire to learn Kotlin on the job. I myself and the other devs on the project will be picking Kotlin up as we go.
The official job description is here: Senior Application Developer UK, but the important bits are as follows:
- Strong object-oriented CFML experience.
- Strong experience with test automation (eg: unit testing).
- Strong experience maintaining and building on existing legacy applications.
- Strong experience designing and developing new web applications / web services.
- Thorough knowledge of design principles such as MVC, SOLID and a good understanding of common design patterns.
Other stuff that is going to be important to us:
- Experience with CFWheels.
- Experience with TDD practices.
- Familiarity with Dockerised development environments.
- Experience with or exposure to Kotlin for server-side development.
- Experience with another language over and above CFML for application development.
- Preparedness to learn Kotlin on the job if no previous experience.
- Familiarity with Agile principles, and experience delivering value in an Agile fashion.
If yer a reader of this blog, you know what I'm like with these things. And they are important to me in this role.
Why Kotlin?
We wanted to go to a statically-typed language, to help us tighten-up our code. I didn't want to do native Java, but there's something to be said for the Java API, so there was a lot of appeal in sticking with a JVM language. I've dabbled inconsequentially with Groovy and love it; thinking it's where CFML could be if Macromedia had done a better job with CFMX. But whilst a lot more popualr than CFML, Groovy's popularity still ain't great. Another consideration is we've been burnt being platformed on a very niche language, and don't want to repeat that (another reason for CFML devs to think about taking an opportunity to jump!). We thought about Scala, but I talked to an industry pal (won't drop their name here), and they convinced me it's a bit heavy for web development, and suggested I look at Kotlin for another language in the same space. I had thought it was only for Android dev, but it's made good headway into the server-app space too. It's got the backing of Google and is stewarded by JetBrains, so it seems solid. It rates well in various language popularity lists. The code looks bloody nice too. It's got a coupla decent-looking MVC frameworks, and good testing libraries too. And it was these last things that swung me, I have to say: language, framework, and testing: I had a look at them and I want to program with them. But I also have a responsibility back to my employer to make a decision which we'll be able to reliably work with for a number of years. I think Kotlin ticks all these boxes. Oh and being a JetBrains project, it's integration into IntelliJ is first class, and IntelliJ is an excellent IDE.
Back to the role…
Logistics-wise this is a remote-first position. The rest of the dev team is remote, around the UK. We have an office but I've never set foot in it. But if you want to work in Bournemouth, there's a desk for you there if that's your thing. The non-dev ppl in that office are all nice :-).
Secondly, we are only able to hire employees who are able to live and work in the UK without visa sponsorship (don't get me started about the UK leaving the EU, FFS). However if you are on the East Coast of the States or elsewhere in Europe or similar sort of timezones, we could consider a strong candidate provided they have the ability to invoice us for services, on a contract basis. We will not consider timezones further afield than that, I'm afraid: I want the whole team to be on deck at the same time for at least half the day (and during their day's normal working hours). It is a fulltime role.
We are likely to have another new starter joining in March, and in the mean time I am going to be aiming to kick the Kotlin project off in our next sprint. First task: get a Kotlin dev environment container created. I think. I think that's a first step. This is how early in the project you will be joining us :-). I intend the application to be 100% TDD, continuous delivery, etc. And delivering something to prod every sprint.
With all this talk about the opportunity to pick-up Kotlin, it's important to be be mindful that all this time the CFML app will still be the app making the company money and paying our salaries, so there will be requirement to work on this as well: new features, enhancing and (cough) fixing existing features. Initially the job will be 100% CFML and 0% Kotlin, but I intend for those percentage to start swapping around as soon as we can, so by some point in 2023 it will be 0% CFML and 100% Kotlin.
If you want to have a chat about this, you can ping me in the CFML Slack channel (if for some reason you're a CFML dev reading this and not already in here, you can join via cfml-slack.herokuapp.com). Or you can send yer CV through to the email address on the job spec page I linked to above. I'm not interested in talking to recruiters for now, just in case you are one (and reading this?). For now I'm only wanting to talk to people in the dev community directly.
Righto.
--
Adam
