Senior PHP developer with experience in Zend Framework

About the client

Guidance is a well known company in the database publishing business. Most of their clients are producers and wholesalers in the Netherlands. Guidance is situated near Rotterdam, the Netherlands and exists 25 years.

The culture within their company is informal, but with discipline. They like to make some jokes now and then, but the products we develop and the projects we deliver must be good and on time.

– How many employees and or developers are there in your company?
Currently we have 16 employees, including 3 developers.
The developers work on our software products, Stentor and Catalogger. Other employees will customize these products for our clients, and a developer can assist them when the customization is especially complex.

– What kind of culture does your company have?
We’re an informal company, and we value creating good solutions for our clients. We don’t have many management layers.

– What type of clients does your company have? (size, industry, specifics)
Manufacturers and Wholesalers, all with large (10.000+) product assortments

– What type of products/services does your company provide?
Products:
Stentor, a complete webshop framework built on PHP/Zend, PostgreSQL, and Solr. Especially suited for larger catalogs, we support product filtering, classification, advanced full text search, shopping carts, payment, favorites, you name it. It is fully responsive, and also comes with a homemade Webeditor (built on React) to author the many other pages (home, news, contact, etc) that make up a complete site.

Catalogger, a PIM (Product Information Management) system. Catalogger also has the capability to automatically generate paper catalogs using Adobe Indesign or Adobe FrameMaker.

We’re also working on a new version a PIM which is being rethought and rewritten from the ground up.

Services:
Tayloring of websites and paper catalogs according to the specifications of the customer.
Design of websites and paper catalogs.

About the project(s)

Stentor developers – they will work on maintaining and expanding our standard webshop framework. This includes work on the Webeditor, the demo website (that is the basis for all our client-projects, and will need both back-end and front-end development), the framework itself, the Administrator interface, and sysadmin requirements where necessary. Tasks can be as simple as fixing bugs or adding components, to more complex ones like setting up a complete public API for the framework or refactoring the framework to work with something more modern than Zend. We also expect documentation and testing.

– What is the turnaround of projects? (1 week/1 year; many small ones/ continuously one system)
For client projects, usually turnaround time is between a few weeks and 2 months.
For our ongoing development of Stentor and the new PIM, this is continuous but we split it up in major feature releases about once a year.

– What will be the ratio of support and new feature development tasks? (like 80% new development and 20% support)
For client projects, support is done by the project employees, not by the developers (except perhaps in a supporting role to the project employee).
For the Stentor project we have about 90% development, and 10% (internal) support.
For the new PIM it’s 100% development at the moment, but that will change once we’re a bit further.

– What will be the ratio of the Front End and Back End tasks for the developer?
For Stentor, the developer does all front-end work (but not the design) for the demo website, the Administrator, and the Webeditor. This includes work on the responsive css framework. There’s more back-end work though, let’s say about 25% front-end and 75% back-end.

About the processes

– What software development processes/methodologies do you use?
As yet we do not have a formal software development proccess.
We do use Git for Stentor and PIM, and Trello board for both as well as for client projects (that are mostly still in SVN). For the new PIM we’re working with Docker, and we have plans to start using this for Stentor too.

– How do you set the tasks to the developer?
For Stentor we have a Trello board with cards, and after a new release we’ll get together and define what we should do for the next release, and have a new list with the relevant, prioritized cards, which developers start working on. A bit agile, but not formally.

– How do you measure performance of the developer?
We compare estimated time with actual time and discuss discrepancies, we look at code quality, for client projects this is mostly how many bugs have to be fixed later, for Stentor and PIM we will have some form of code review.

Requirements

Stentor developer
– Experience with PHP, SQL, Solr
– Experience with HTML, CSS, Javascript (jQuery)
– Experience with XML
– Affinity with Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, Solr (sysadmin)
– nice to have: iOS and/or Android experience

– Good communication skills
– Good command of English
– Proactive, fast learner
– Eye for details
– Precise

– Experience with React
– Experience with Zend Framework, and preferably a more modern one as well
– Experience with Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, Solr (sysadmin)
– Smart, and good at high-level thinking/seeing the big picture

About Personal Programmer

We are a nearshoring company that help Macedonian developers to find their dream job working for an international client. A job where you can grow as a developer, and get the most out of your working life whilst enjoying every day you come to our office.

We give you the best working atmosphere possible in one of our Skopje based offices. Working alongside other developers who all have their own client. We have an ocean based setup where everyone works in the same office space. Our HR is solely focused on making you feel at home at our office and in your job. We help with communication towards the client if needed and advise on salary and other work related subjects. At Personal Programmer you are in good hands and we are looking forward to welcoming you to our family.