[LRUG] [JOBS] Rails dev required for startup

[George Palmer]

Hi LRUG,

I'm doing some contract work at a funded startup in the property area
that is looking for another contractor or possibly a full time
employee.  There's an option for a development lead for the right
person too.  The site is a place to find more information about a
property & the area when you're looking to buy or rent, with a special
focus on things you may not normally consider but effect your standard
of living.  The site is very much not involved in property listing
side of things but aims to answer such questions as: what's crime like
in the area, how much noise will I get from planes or nearby factories
and whether there'll be problems parking on your road due to
commuters.

All this has been made possible thanks to the Governments efforts on
Open Data*  There is a serious amount of datasets out there now and
many are vast in size, so intelligent processing with a focus on
what's important to answer is key to us.  For example is it better to
say how close a school is in distance (miles) or how long it will take
somebody to get there?  When it is safe to assume they'll drive and
when will they walk?  Are they more bothered about the current Ofsted
rating or the historic ones and the direction the school is heading
in?  And does any of this matter if the property is outside the
catchment area (or do they still want to see the school anyway as it's
so good it will maybe make them consider closer properties)?  So as
you can see there's lots of interesting problems to be solved both on
the data and presentation side.

Job wise I think it would suit a mid to lower-senior level dev.  The
stack is a standard Rails 3.2, well covered by specs and cucumber, but
any experience of PostGIS or Postgres with large datasets would be a
bonus (although not necessary).  There's an option between office
based and remote work but very occasionally you might also find
yourself with a sound meter standing next to a motorway to check that
algorithm you wrote about car noise from the motorway is actually
correct.

The url is http://www.propertydetective.com although the site isn't
going live for a few months.  We're not looking to use a recruiter for
this position or to outsource the work but if you're aren't either of
those and interested please contact me at:
george.palmer at propertydetective.com and we can arrange to talk
further.

* - am I actually saying they're doing something well?  My God.

George