PRX is Hiring: Web Application Developer
The Public Radio Exchange
Job posting: Web Application Developer
Location: Harvard Square - Cambridge, MA
Type of Position: Full-time with benefits
Post Date: July 11th, 2005
Start date: Immediately
About PRX
The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) is a nonprofit web-based service for distribution, review, and licensing of radio content. PRX brings new voices to new audiences, creates a fair market for creative radio, and helps local radio stations assemble diverse and exceptional programming. PRX is an active online community of listeners, producers, and stations collaborating to reshape public radio.
PRX is less than four years old and has joined the constellation of the established public radio distributors like NPR, PRI and American Public Media but with a completely different approach. We work with all three networks along with hundreds of local stations, independent producers, and international broadcasters including the CBC, BBC, and Radio Netherlands. PRX is the catalyst for dynamic change, debate and implementation occuring in public radio and non-broadcast media.
Check it out: http://www.prx.org and http://about.prx.org
PRX is a collaboration of two other non-profits: the Station Resource Group (a think tank and advocacy group for public radio stations) and Atlantic Public Media (based on Cape Cod, this group of producers is delivering some of the most interesting and challenging radio anywhere, by partnering with NPR and others).
PRX gets its money from three sources:
* Public radio stations that pay membership fees to PRX
* Producers who also pay membership fees
* Foundations and public funding organizations including The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, NTIA's Technology Opportunities Program, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Surdna Foundation.
Duties And Responsibilities
The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) seeks a full-time web application developer to join our team and contribute to the creation of new platforms and tools for our emerging public media digital marketplace and community. We are looking for an enthusiastic and creative engineer with a passion for building robust, scalable applications with simple, powerful interfaces, and who is comfortable working in a dynamic, changing environment. You'll work closely with our other developers and the PRX team on all phases of the development cycle including planning, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance. This position reports to the Managing Director.
Required Education, Experience and Skills
BSCS (or equivalent experience) plus 2+ yrs of hands-on software engineering experience required. Demonstrated problem-solving skills on a large and small scale with ability to undertake and complete sophisticated software projects. Demonstrated ability to research and learn new technologies quickly and constantly. In-depth knowledge of all of the following areas necessary: web development and/or rich client development, object oriented programming, SQL databases, software project mgmt. Should have experience in at least one web development stack (Java, Struts or PHP, LAMP, etc.) and/or client-side GUI development. We are particularly interested in candidates with interest and expertise in audio engineering, UI/usability, and there is a buzzword bonus for familiarity and/or interest in agile development and AJAX. Comfort with OSX and/or Linux a plus.
A little about our development stack - We run Tomcat in production, and Spring, Hibernate, Lucene, Struts/Webwork are the frameworks that we get our hands dirty with every day. We tightly manage our code in a Subversion repository and use Ant/Maven2 to help our release processes go smoothly. We document our requirements and keep on top of our code base using tools donated to us from companies like Jet Brains (IntelliJ IDEA), Atlassian (JIRA/Confulence) and Cenqua (Clover/Fisheye). We believe that less is more when it comes to code and re-factoring is a never ending job.
You'll be a good fit at PRX if:
* You like working with small teams on long and short projects
* Like public radio and want to make it better
* Enjoy having an impact on the direction of a small, successful company
* You like intensity
* You appreciate mission-driven nonprofit and public service goals
* Thrive in a work environment that is casual and unstuffy, but one that has clear goals and objectives
* You are used to taking full responsibility for your work
* Are willing to speak up, contribute and share cool things that are not about your immediate tasks (we inhale blogs, use del.icio.us, tap into new ideas and projects in the Harvard/MIT orbit and generally are open source in our approach to information, people and knowledge)
* You are flexible
Work in an office where the windows open wide, a coffee machine brews all morning and you can hop on the T in minutes. We've got a kitchen but you must take care of your own dishes.
Candidates with interest and experience in open source, audio engineering, social software, public media, and community sites are encouraged to apply.
PRX is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
To Apply for this Opportunity
Please email a resume and cover letter to developerjob@prx.org
