Zimride: Silicon Valley Startup scouting for Zim talent

It’s not everyday that a startup based in Silicon Valley; the home of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and just about every significant technology platform-eagerly looks to hire local talent. Well this is not just any startup, its Zimride! According to Logan Green; the startup’s co-founder and CEO, they are currently seeking to hire talent from around the world and Zimbabweans would be a great addition to the team…

The following opportunities have arisen:

Front-end Engineer

About You
You are the fastest front-end developer that you know. You can bring a page to life using clean semantic html, beautiful CSS3, and plenty of tricked out jQuery — and get it to validate (mostly). You enjoy working with a small tight-knit development team, sometimes burning the midnight oil to get a project deployed on a tight deadline. You learn quickly and can easily adapt to a wide variety of programming challenges. You are as comfortable writing object-oriented Javascript as you are getting something to display correctly in IE6.

Your Responsibilities

• Build a rock solid UI, that is clean, fast, and accessible
• Write lots of object-oriented Javascript, mostly using jQuery
• Bring hi-res mockups to life, striving for pixel-perfect matching, while using an economy of assets (i.e. use css with as few images as possible)
• Build beautiful pages with CSS3 that degrade gracefully in older browsers
• Create HTML emails that hold up across email clients

You Must Have

• Experience with Object-oriented Jacascript, jQuery, CSS, semantic HTML
• A basic sense for design and user experience
• Ability to thrive in a startup environment

Bonus Points For

• Familiarity with PHP, the Smarty template engine, or MySQL
• Mobile (Android or iPhone) front-end coding experience
• Experience working with the Facebook Platform and Google Maps APIs
• Previous work experience with a consumer Internet company
• Contributions to open source projects
• Passion for sustainability and/or transportation

Along with your application please include sample code from a recent project. For extra credit tell us how you would refactor the front-end of zimride.com or zimride.com/p.

Software Engineer
About You
You love nothing more than developing web applications and writing clean and efficient code. You have a mind for both product and user experience, have great communication skills, and enjoy working with a tight-knit development team. You are a generalist who learns quickly and on the fly and who can easily adapt to a wide variety of programming challenges. You are as comfortable optimizing a MySQL query as you are getting CSS to work in IE6. You either have experience with or are excited to learn all parts of our stack: PHP, Smarty templates, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Google Maps API, and Facebook Platform.

Your Responsibilities

• Design and implement features that help improve the Zimride user experience
• Optimize code for speed and reliability
• Brainstorm ideas with the team and help shape the product roadmap

You Must Have

• B.S., M.S., or PhD. in Computer Science or equivalent
• Experience with, or ability to quickly learn, object-oriented PHP programming
• Experience working with relational databases
• Great oral and written communication skills
• Ability to thrive in a startup environment

Bonus Points For

• Experience with MySQL query optimization
• Experience working with the Facebook Platform and Google Maps API
• Experience with mobile development
• Previous work with social networks
• Contributions to open source projects
• Passion for sustainability and/or transportation

Programming Challenge (Optional)

Calculate the detour distance between two different rides. Given four lattitude / longitude pairs, where driver one is traveling from point A to point B and driver two is traveling from point C to point D, write a function (in your language of choice) to calculate the shorter of the detour distances the drivers would need to take to pick-up and drop-off the other driver.