Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Immediate Openings for SDET - 2, 3 month contracts.

We are looking to staff immediately, 2 SDET 3 month contracts with Amazon. This would be a great opportunity for graduates or alumini who are very tech savvy and tech focussed (as opposed to Dev/PM combo). They can contact me directly at soniawest02@gmail.com or 206-353-4370 (cell and text). We could look to set up phone screens as soon as this week.  

Software Development Engineer in Test(SDE), New Programs. Contract Position
We’re building a new team to launch a new Amazon program that will be sure to turn a few heads. When we reach out to other teams for help, we get responses like this: “I *love* that Amazon is [redacted] and want to do everything I can to help you.”

Our program impacts Amazon’s core retail business. Your friends, family, and Amazon.com’s millions of other customers will know what you built. The thing is, our project is secret so we can’t just hang a bunch of details about it out on a job description. So how, you may ask, can we hope to lure SDE's to our team without providing those details - when there are over a thousand Amazon SDE positions open in Seattle? Good question, and one to which I may not have the answer, but here’s what I’m thinking: instead of describing the program in detail, I’ll describe the ideal Software Development Engineer candidate in detail. If this sounds like you, then it’s likely the role on our team would be a better fit for you than those thousand other ones. Sound good? Okay, here goes:

You may be the ideal Software Development Engineer candidate for this specific project if:

You are a good person, and care about others more than yourself
You are disproportionately motivated by the thought of launching V1 of something vs. launching v2…n
You like to work with a wide array of technology (services, front-end, data mining) rather than specialize in one particular area
You like to work without a map or guide. You’d rather be thrown into the deep end and solve complex technology problems for yourself rather than have your hand held
You truly care about the business results of what you build, not just the elegance of the technology you build
You adapt to change well, and aren’t particularly phased by course changes


You may be the ideal Software Development Engineer candidate for our team if:

You are open and honest
You have a positive and optimistic personality. Setbacks motivate you to work harder
You are confident in your technical abilities, and maybe even have a bit of an ego, but you keep your ego in check
You are passionate about your craft, and opinionated about the right way to do things (but you aren’t a jerk about it)
You’re willing to change your mind (stubborn on vision, but flexible on details)
You prefer to work very hard on the exact right things for 8 hours a day and then go be with your family and friends, rather than work a 12-hour day that includes correcting people on Reddit or debating the merits of your language of choice vs. Python/Ruby/etc.


Does this sound like you? If so, and you meet the software engineering qualifications below, then you should apply for this position. Not to worry, if you come and interview we’ll tell you a lot more about the project. By the time we make you an offer you’ll have the complete picture. Trust me, you’ll like it.

If this isn’t you, but sounds like a Software Development Engineer you know, then it is your duty to tell them about the role. They’ll thank you later.
Basic Qualifications
A Software Development Engineer (SDE) on our team is required to have these qualifications:

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field
Proficiency in, at least, one modern programming language such as C, C++, Java, or Perl
5+ years professional experience in software development
Computer Science fundamentals in object-oriented design, data structures, algorithm design, problem solving, and complexity analysis

Preferred Qualifications
A Software Development Engineer (SDE) is particularly valuable to our team if they have any of these qualifications:

Experience building highly-available distributed systems on cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS)
Expertise in Java, Python, HTML, JQuery, JavaScript, CSS
Interest or experience in designing and tuning an AWS CloudSearch-based search service
Knowledge of professional software engineering practices & best practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Experience brewing beer or baking sweet breads (or cookies)