My day job needs to hire more people to help us grow (and give me a few days off). If you know anyone interested, please send them my way. The position reports to me directly so not only do you get to work for a great company you get to work with me. Tell me that’s not a great perk, eh? I’ve posted the description below. What it doesn’t tell you is that you’ll get to work in an exciting and challenging technical environment with hundreds of millions of http requests/day. Get your hands dirty with things like mod_perl and memcached, geolocation, contextual analysis, search trending and fraud filtering. It’s like drinking from the fire hose every day!

Company: Traffic Engine, Inc.
Job Title: Senior Developer
Description: Seasoned developer (Perl, mod_perl, Linux, Apache, PHP) with experience in a high volume web environment. The right applicant must have strong communication skills and be able to think outside of the box. You’ll need to be familiar with the Perl language and mod_perl. Proficiency with Linux in a server environment is a must.

Location: Irvine, CA (Telecommute)
Starting Salary: $60 – 100K+ (Based on Experience)
Position Type: Full Time Only

The position will works remotely from the corporate office (unless lives within 25 miles of Irvine California).   The developer will work in a team environment and contribute to constant upgrades, maintenance and new development of existing and new applications as required.

Responsibilities

•    Develop and maintain Perl modules to be run under Apache2/mod_perl2
•    Develop and maintain Perl scripts for system maintenance and data processing
•    Develop and maintain web applications using PHP, JavaScript, Ajax, and MySQL/PostgreSQL
•    Contribute to the design and development of internal applications, strategies, and methods of improving current and future applications
•    Report and submit status on projects as required
•    Document code and create documentation as required
•    Collaborate with team members efficiently and effectively via telephone, IM, or IRC
•    Provide technical support to internal employees as well as external clients as needed
•    Participate in some marketing functions such as Ad:tech and / or other technical functions.
•    Minimal travel may be required
•    Self motivated and ability to be effective working remotely
•    Other responsibilities as required

Qualifications

•    2-4 years of experience developing web-based applications
•    3+ years fluency in Object Oriented Programming, and PHP5.x implementation
•    3+ years of MySQL and/or PostgreSQL
•    2+ years of Javascript
•    3+ years of Perl
•    2+ years of Linux
•    Ability to write valid and efficient xHTML, DHTML, CSS, SQL, and JavaScript code
•    Experience writing AJAX code
•    Understanding of relational database concepts, including JOIN statements and foreign key constraints
•    Experience using a Version Control System (SVN a plus)

Any of these qualifications a plus
•    Experience implementing third-party APIs
•    Experience developing in MVC environments
•    Knowledge of how paid search campaigns work
•    Knowledge of SEO tactics

About Traffic Engine, Inc:

Traffic Engine’s Search Marketing Technology (SMarT) connects the right people with the right ads, delivering industry-leading exposure and click conversion by utilizing a targeted customer base and more than five years of online ad placement experience to help our publishers realize their full revenue potential.  Recently added is our new AdExchange that enables direct advertisers to bid on traffic in the SMarT Platform to drive quality business to their ads.

Traffic Engine, Inc. offers our employees:

* Technology driven and team oriented environment
* Competitive compensation at all levels
* Company matching retirement program
* Excellent benefits for employee
* Flexible schedules where results are the focus

Interested candidates who meet these qualifications should send a resume and letter of interest via email to careers@trafficengine.net  and include “Senior Developer” in the subject header.  Please also send any examples of work or projects recently implemented

[Crossposted from stonetable.org. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

2008 is past, replaced by a new year and new hopes.

It was a rocky year, filled with good and bad. Divorce, and marriage, deaths on Andrea’s side of the family. Kittens and a new puppy. A historic election and rocky economic times. We’re still in for a bumpy financial ride but everything else is looking like its trending upward.

I did alright on my goals from 2008. Not bad, but the best I could manage under the circumstances:

Personal:

• Finalize the divorce
• Get out of debt
• Be happy

Writing:

• Write 12 new short stories (finished #13 on New Years Eve)
• Revise and polish 12 stories
• Submit 12 stories for publication (sent out 21 submissions, 2 accepted (1 electronic, 1 print), 1 pending, 1 anthology in hand)
• Submit a story to the Writers of the Future contest quarterly

Work:

• Finish migrating out of my hands-on role to more of a managerial one
• Successfully manage and complete all planned projects
• Come up with brilliant new projects for people to work on
• Grow the company

For 2009, I want to continue the good trends I’ve already set. It’s going to be another busy year but I’m more prepared to tackle it. My goals for 2009:

Personal

• Be a better husband (because there’s always room for improvement)
• Build a better budget and get out of debt
• Apply for Permanent Resident & move to Canada
• Lose the weight I gained in 2008

Work

• Less micromanaging, more delegating
• Hire, hire, hire.

Writing

• Write 12 new short stories
• Revise and polish 12 short stories
• Send out at least 24 submissions
• Apply for the CSSF Workshop and Viable Paradise (Clarion, I’m looking at you in 2010)
• Submit a story to the Writers of the Future contest.

[Crossposted from stonetable.org. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

Home from New York City. Short trips like this are always a little tiring. So much activity crammed into a short period of time. This was my second trip to Ad Tech. I’m a techie at heart and don’t consider myself much of a salesman. That puts me in the minority at a trade show like this.

I’ve always had an eye for business. When I wrote software for the tanning industry, I would often talk to salon owners about what they did and what they needed. I even spent several nights working behind the counter, so I understood how their business worked.

Over the years, I’ve become a little more comfortable stepping out of the technical role. It helps that I’m passionate about the work I do and firmly believe we have a technically superior system. I designed it from the ground up and for the last four and a half years it’s been my baby. As the company grows and I step into more of a management role, I delegate more and slowly put the tools into the capable hands of the team we have built and continue to build.

I met many of my clients/partners at Ad Tech or the after party. It’s always a pleasure to put a face to the name. In some cases, there were people I’ve been working with for nearly five years that I met for the first time yesterday.

A good trip, good food, and good people. I passed Diane Neal from Law & Order: SVU on 7th avenue (I’m such a L&O fanboy). I had my first New York style hot dog. I ate my first (and possibly last) oyster. I celebrated Obama’s win in Times Square.

[Crossposted from stonetable.org. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

I made it to New York City with minimal difficulty today. Court went smoothly and traffic was light, so I made it to O’Hare with enough time to catch an earlier flight. One shuttle and subway ride later, I found the Westin and checked-in.

I met my co-workers for dinner at Quality Meats, followed by 40/40, where we co-sponsored a VIP party for the trade show. A fun night, and I got to meet several people I’d only known via email or instant message.

Feeling a little dead tonight. My original flight was canceled and American Airlines decided they needed to call me at 4:15AM and 4:45AM to make sure I knew about it. Between that and the flight I managed about four hours sleep today and tomorrow’s going to be another busy day. Here’s to hoping the beds here are comfortable.

It also looks like I’ll be staying over an extra day, so home again on Wednesday. I’m already missing Andrea and our menagerie of pets. I hear the dogs have been camping out at the front door all day and night, waiting for my return.

I sent in my absentee ballot a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t already, please go vote and make your voice heard. I think we’re on the brink of seeing some real change happen and that makes me feel pretty damn good.

[Crossposted from stonetable.org. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

The last of the hardware is in place.  All that's left to do is some documentation and minor configurations.

It's always nice when a plan is executed well. It's remarkable that we managed to pull this one off without a single hitch.  Everything went smooth and as expected. Now I can get back to writing Perl and creating cool things.

Dena is taking the train in and the three of us will go to Fogo de Chao to celebrate. Tomorrow I don't plan on doing anything except sleeping and going to see Harry Potter on the local IMAX followed by more sleep. I expect to wake up sometime mid-week. Cheers until then.

Nineteen servers
Two switches
One load balancer
Twenty-six hours awake
Three hours of sleep before our sales rep called to ask me how the move went.

The move was a spectacular success.  Minimal downtime, no injuries, and no broken equipment.  We're back in the data center now, upgrading some hardware and migrating our DNS server.  Tomorrow afternoon, we can move the last two pieces of equipment and be on our way.

I'll have to make a few trips back this week.  Once all of the servers are moved, I have to get the data center people to "de-energize" my power units, carry them up to the new facility, and ask those people to "re-energize" them. When it's all over, I'll have the room/power/network to double my capacity.

I've only been home for a couple days and I'm already heading back out on the road.

I've been working for the past couple months to move our work servers to a new provider.  Our current data center is more of a DIY service.  If I have new hardware to be installed, I have to physically install it myself.  Once upon a time I enjoyed that kind of work, but I'm learning the art of delegation.  Mastering that dark art will be the key to making the time to do things other than work.

Our new provider is great.  I can ship them new servers.  They will physically put the hardware in my rack and install the operating system of my choice.  All we'll have to do is install our software, which we do remotely. If a server malfunctions, they'll attach an IP-KVM (a device that let's me access it remotely as if I were physically in front of it). Pure bliss.

The contract is signed, so tomorrow I'll head downtown and spend another couple days living from a hotel. Flavio, one of my awesome employees, will fly in and spend the weekend with me in the cold, dark data center.

If everything goes well, I'll be charging some kind of charred meat to the company and be home and in bed sometime Sunday night.

I haven't made it out to see Harry Potter yet, either.  Boo.