[LRUG] O2 requires senior-level developer(s)

[James Adam]

Hi all,

As I mentioned at the last LRUG, we at Go Free Range have been working
with O2 for the past year, helping them build a prototype (and now
beta) system called #blue, enabling users to access message data via
the web, and enabling developers to build applications on top of that
data.

If you're an O2 customer, the best way to find out more is to sign up
at https://hashblue.com; API documentation and an API browser for
account-holders is available at https://api.hashblue.com too. Please
feel free to sign up and kick it in the tyres.

While O2 are a giant company, we've been lucky enough to have the
opportunity (and, indeed, the mandate) to build this system in a very
agile way, and we're now looking to help O2 continue in this vein by
building up their own development team to look help work on #blue and
tackle other new platform projects with the newly created "Lab"
department. You may not believe it, but there are elements with
reasonable clout in O2 who want to make it a very developer-friendly
company.

We can only speak personally about the #blue codebase, but it is well
tested, DevOps-friendly and veritably ship-shape and bristol
fashioned. We're working on it right now, and will be for a while yet.
We keep it in the kind of state that we'd want to find it, were we in
your position. You lucky, lucky person :)

It's quite early in the process, but from the details we've been given
by O2 we understand that they're looking for one or possibly two
senior-level developers. You'd be working within a small team, but
will have a large amount of autonomy and ownership.

Remuneration-wise, the salary seems to be around the £50k mark, and
there is talk of big-company benefits like a company car. That all
seems crazy to me - I like the Boris Bikes myself - but it might be
useful to some. O2's main office is in Slough, but they have invested
a large amount of sponsorship in TechHub, so there's also the
opportunity to work in London's trendy Shoreditch (although I don't
know where you'd park your company car).

I know one of the biggest problems for Ruby long-timers is finding
suitably senior positions without punting on start-up equity, so if
you're looking for a change this could be a great opportunity.

If you're interested, get in touch off-list at lets at gofreerange.com,
and we'll try to take things from there.

Cheers,

James / Go Free Range