[LRUG] [JOBS] full-stack / app developers needed, to help promote a minor vandalism and pranking

[Matthew Karas]

[beano.com] is a new kids' entertainment platform, with a certain proportion (maybe 10% to 20%) of content from the comic. It is part of a massive new investment by DC Thomson, which includes a 52 episode TV series and feature films.


The real fun, technically, is that many standard elements of the digital economy are simply not allowed on sites which are openly directed at kids. So, kids end up on adult sites. Most actual kids' sites are also extremely boring. We aim to publish new entertainment, in kids' own terms, several times a day.


However, to succeed in becoming a successful business, we have to re-invent virality, affiliate sales, advertising?, sponsorship, eCommerce, while respecting the reasons why the new rules are there - kids deserve privacy, and parents need to feel that the entertainment ther darling offspring love, is both appropriate, and safe from the weird mash-ups of advertising and content, which are endemic across the wider web.


We have already developed a CMS and some React-based apps, but there is an insane level of creativity and a willingness to innovate, right up to the CEO. We are passionate about continuous deployment, and there is no resistance to the idea that engineers can contribute creative ideas to the product. We are also committed to a certain level of fearlessness, e.g. building our own analytics tools, when we find limitations of GA etc, but without wanting to reinvent the wheel.

We are looking for highly experienced all-rounders. All the members of our launch team of five, have been lead developers, and two of them have been CTOs. However, we are a little heavy on contractors, and further, some of them are coming up to previously booked contract dates, extended travel plans and sabbaticals. The plan is to have a small team of self-managing people, which will be at least four-strong as a steady state, augmenting to five, six or more, as necessary, eventually growing to a larger steady size, with a much higher velocity, as the business grows.

So...

We are looking for a couple of developers with experience across the following:

Ruby-on-Rails
Elasticsearch
HTML5 / Javascript
React
iOs / Android (not much Java, ObjC or Swift so far, but might be necessary going forward)
TestFlight
Crashlytics
Devops (We have budget for this on top of developers, but not enough for full-time role)

It's a long-shot, but it would be a big plus (to avoid single points of failure) if candidates have experience of all the technologies. It might, for example, suit a one-man-band, lean-start-up refugee. It would be an even bigger plus, if candidates were looking for staff posts, and to stick around for the long term. This platform is not going away, and the team might eventually be deployed to launch other products from scratch.

Feel free to contact me [matthew.karas at beano.com<mailto:matthew.karas at beano.com>]. We have two excellent agencies already, so with all due respect, and a certain amount of cool, detached violent intent, we don't need any more.

Best of all, while we know that there are plenty of cool jobs out there, in this one, you get to work on the Beano!

Obviously, there is the baggage carried over from being part of a larger corporation. You have probably encountered huge meetings, where you can't get a word in edgeways. The height of bureaucracy here, is that every Monday morning, all staff are invitied to a video conference, with our colleagues in Dundee, during which they go through the new week's Beano comic, cover to cover.

Matthew Karas
Chief Technology Officer

m. 07776 198 200
matthew.karas at beano.com<mailto:michelle.milner at beano.com>
www.beano.com<http://www.beano.com/>

Beano Studios, 185 Fleet Street, London  EC4A 2HS

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