Part‐Time Front and Back End Web Developer

Are you a techie with a desire to bringing ideas to life through clean design and clean code? Do you want to prove your development and project management skills in order to showcase your talents? Are you a quick learner and problem‐solver who’d like to get paid to gain or strengthen skills in languages or frameworks?

If so, we’d love to hear from you!

We are a team of two in University of Waterloo’s School of Planning, Faculty of Environment with a passion for and project on cities. We are excited to promote and build Canada’s first research repository, interactive maps and online forum on compact, walkable cities, strategies and their design. The project is led by Professor Pierre Filion and PhD student, Neluka Leanage, and we’re looking for a part‐time front and back end web developer to join our team.

Main responsibilities

• Understand requirements, evaluate options and develop solutions in negotiated timeframes.
• Back‐end and front‐end development including creating and customizing CMS themes and plugins e.g., WordPress or Drupal.
• Use the latest industry standards to deliver a secure, functional, responsive and scalable website with versioning system.
• Ensure that the lead researchers can easily promote and maintain the site as the project and research grows with and without your assistance.
• Work in an adaptive, incremental manner, diligently managing, delivering, testing and troubleshooting iterations, and meeting key milestones.
• Be willing to provide suggestions and feedback in line with the project leaders’ vision and directions.
• Be comfortable working both independently and as a collaborative team member.
• Commit to a minimum of four months, ideally 8 months.

You will…

• Gain relevant experience in front end and back end development, implementation, testing and debugging.
• Apply and increase your technical, project management and problem‐solving skills in a real world client‐like environment.
• Build re‐useable code and translate designs into a website for you to showcase in your portfolio.
• Work with two engaging and constructive professionals on a meaningful project.
• Practice what you’ve learned in agile, adaptive and collaborative methods.
• Be compensated between $16‐$18 per hour (depending on skills and experience).
• Be able to balance your studies, giving a reasonable 5‐10 hour per week to the project.

Essential skills and qualifications

• Knowledge of iterative and/or agile software development cycle.
• Ability to manage web project and time e.g., issue and time tracking, regular communication.
• Attention to detail and ability to think through problem logically and troubleshoot.
• Proficient understanding of web markup and application databases, including HTML5, CSS3,
• JavaScript, PHP and MySQL.
• Knowledge of JavaScript libraries and frameworks, ideally AJAX, Google Maps, jQuery and geoJSON.
• Previous experience using or rapid ability to learn and customize WordPress or Drupal, and integrate third‐party extensions and plugins.
• Ability to collaborate in a team and work independently on tasks.
• Capacity to translate wireframes and designs into clean, re‐useable code and features.
• Ability to manipulate and integrate multiple data sources and databases.

Nice‐to‐have skills

• Knowledge of server‐side scripting to generate interactive, dynamic webpages and maps.
• Understanding of web accessibility and security compliance.
• Management of hosting environment including database administration and set up to scale site over time.
• Setup and administration of version control and backups.
• Proficient understanding of cross‐browser compatibility issues and ways to work around them.
• Comfortable working with debugging tools like Firebug, Chrome inspector, etc.
• Ability to understand CSS changes and their ramifications to ensure consistent style across platforms and browsers.
• Good understanding of SEO principles and ensuring that the application will adhere to them.

To apply

• Review walkablecentres.ca to learn about the project and our old website.
• Send your letter and résumé along with any work samples of websites and databases developed by you (or if with a team, identify your specific tasks) (online links are ideal) to nleanage@uwaterloo no later than Sunday, January 20, 2018, 11:59PM. The part-time position will be 5‐10 hours per week between January 2018 and August 2018.
• Make sure you demonstrate how you meet the technical and interpersonal requirements, and highlight any other skills you think would be advantageous.
• Short‐listed candidates will be given a problem from our old website, 1 to 2 hours to solve it and then present the solution to our team as part of an interview.