Well, it’s that time again. Alagad is hiring! I’m hoping to find one or two extremely talented Flex and ColdFusion programmers to join my team of developers. The people I’m looking for will have a lot of strong experience with enterprise development.

So, if you’re a senior developer who wants to get paid generously to work from home, please waste no time in applying.

Here are some finer details of what I’m looking for:

Languages

My team works primarily with the Adobe toolset. That is, ColdFusion, Flex and Air. Experience with LCDS would be a big bonus too.

We also do some fairly involved JavaScript and AJAX work. Advanced experience with Microsoft SQL is also necessary.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some work related to Java and Hibernate in the future. I really need someone who solidly understands software development and who could, if the need was there, quickly learn something new and move forward with it.

Virtually all the work we do here is Object Oriented. You need to understand OOP, design patterns, and more to be productive.

Obviously HTML, CSS and XML go almost without saying.

Frameworks

On a day to day basis we use ModelGlue, ColdSpring and Reactor for ColdFusion. We’re also actively building new frameworks to fit other niches. As for Flex, Cainrgorm or Model-Glue Flex is a big bonus. And for Javascript we’ve been using a lot of jQuery as well as the YUI and Spry too.

Authoring

I need someone who can talk and write professionally. When you’re speaking with clients you must sound professional and intelligent. Also, you’ll be required to write at least one technical blog entry per week and the occasional article for CFDJ, FAQU, or devnet. You may even be asked to do the occasional user group presentation or talk at a conference. (All of this is on company time You work, I pay.)

Other Skills

There’s a good chance that I could throw just about anything at you. I need you to be able to roll with it. For example, sometimes I might need you to be able to take a PSD or jpeg image and turn it into clean CSS and HTML. So, some experience with Photoshop or Fireworks would be a big help.

Mindset

I’m looking for someone with a great attitude. My goal is to be the best employer any one of my employees has ever had. If you’re too jaded to believe that I’m earnest (if not a little idealistic), please look somewhere else.

I’m going to be finding ways to expand the compensation package to include profit sharing. For this to work well, I believe that we’ll all need to be committed. If you can come to the table with the appropriate brains and enthusiasm, we can all do well.

The Bottom Line

I can sum this up in one phrase: You’ve got to be smart and get things done.

So, why would you want to work with me?

Well, as I said above, I’m striving to be the best employer in the Adobe toolset market. Alagad is, however, a small business. So, I need to be really creative in how I try to be the best I can be. Here’s what I offer right now:

Hourly Pay

Are you sick of working 60 hours a week but being paid for 40? Well, first off, I rarely ask for any more than 40 hours in a week. But, if you do work more than 40 I’ll pay you for every hour you work!

Work from Home

All of Alagad’s employees work from home, wherever they are. Alagad has no real central office. This allows you to work wherever you want: Home, in bed, at the coffee shop, on an airplane. It doesn’t matter to me.

What this means is that you get more time for yourself and your family. Alagad doesn’t require that you pay for the expenses and time of a commute.

Flexible Schedule

At Alagad we’re less concerned with the hours you’re in the office than that you get your work done. That’s not to say that we don’t want to talk to you during the day, but if you want to cut out early in the afternoon we simply don’t care. Do you need to pick you kid up from school? No problem. Life is full of interruptions. We don’t mind, so long as you get your work done!

Generous PTO

Because we pay hourly, we’re able to do some novel things with your PTO plan. From day one you will earn PTO. For each hour you work you get an additional 7.5% that goes into your PTO account. This means that in an average 160 hour month you’ll earn 12 hours of PTO. And, because this is calculated based on the number of hours you work, the more you work, the more you get in PTO.

You can take your PTO whenever you want or you can collect it. PTO time never expires. We quite literally put this time in the bank for you. You can collect PTO for your entire career with Alagad. And, when you leave you’ll get any left over time in a check.

Also, one of the stranger things we do here is that we do not offer any holiday days off. These are already factored into your PTO. Really, we’re not being so presumptuous as to assume you want to take particular days off. If you’d rather not take Labor Day off, we won’t make you. But if you would like to take, say, your birthday off, you can! It’s up to you.

Health Insurance Stipend

Any small business owner can tell you that paying for Health Insurance is a huge burden. Also, no one is ever really satisfied with group health plans. So, at Alagad, we decided not to do group insurance. Instead, we let you (and help you) find insurance on your own. It’s really not that hard and, believe it or not, it’s cheaper than most group plans.

Once you’ve arranged for insurance we’ll then pay a stipend of $200 per month if you’re single and $400 if you’re married or in a domestic partnership. In most cases this is about 50% of health insurance costs. We can even arrange for all of your health insurance costs to be tax free.

I you want to work for Alagad, please put together a nice cover letter and resume and send it to me at dhughes(at)Alagad(dot)com. And, this is important, please include the word “salamander” in your email subject. If you don’t include it, I won’t get your resume. Extra points will be given for creativity!