SPUG: IMDb is looking for people with Perl system skills

SPUG Jobs jobs-noreply at seattleperl.org
Wed Mar 29 16:06:42 PST 2006


Software Jobs

If you're a top notch programmer and a fan of movies and TV, we've got the
ideal job for you.

There are many good reasons to work at IMDb, and here are three of them:

* You can make a huge difference at IMDb. We've already developed a
successful business model and a stable production environment, so our
programmers spend their time developing and launching cool projects with
little red tape and lots of autonomy.

* We offer flexibility both in terms of your day-to-day work schedule and
also in terms of work assignments. Ours is no cookie-cutter job.

* Our software developers provide lots of creative input into projects and
get to work on many different types of projects that allow them to think
creatively and to handle interesting computer science challenges.

All software positions require a minimum of a bachelor's degree in
computer science with three plus years of industry programming experience.
In particular, we're looking for applicants who are skilled in Perl and
able to develop systems, not just programs.

1. Software Developer/Database Specialist (Seattle). We are looking for a
senior member of our data team. You'll be involved in the design,
enhancement and schema definition, and data modelling for our high-volume
website. As a senior database developer, you'll help develop scripting
access modules and scope and implement data migration/scalability for
MySQL and Postgres. The team is small so there is there an opportunity to
try your hand at several different skills including building front end
tools for our data managers using state-of-the-art templating systems and
techniques such as AJAX and Mason. To be successful in this position, you
must have strong relational database background and appropriate background
in the use of design tools such as ERWIN. You must be able to perform
hands-on database tuning and query optimization and be experienced in
Linux/Unix environment. Experience in database interfaces such as
ODBC/JDBC is helpful but not required. Experience in a large-scale,
custom-developed, high availability operations is helpful.

2. Software Developer (Seattle). We are looking for an applicant with some
advanced competency in one or more areas that can complement our current
staff. This can include, but is not restricted to C++, Javascript, DHTML,
Mason, AJAX statistics, Windows client development, data modeling, natural
language processing or web services. We'd like to see examples of your
skills in these areas - either from a personal website or from other
materials.

For all positions, you must genuinely be self-motivated. Our staff is
distributed across the planet so we need employees who can function
independently while also interacting efficiently with other team members.
For our novel work environment we need programmers who work hard and think
big.

More Details: You don't really need to love movies or TV to thrive here,
but it certainly doesn't hurt. We have a great environment of talented
people who work hard to make IMDb the most credible film source on the
planet and we'd like you to join us if you're like-minded.

IMDb is owned by Amazon.com, but we operate separately and have our own
technology systems. When you join IMDb, you become a full-fledged
Amazon.com employee - which means you enjoy the cohesive work environment
of a small company while also gaining the bigger benefits of working for a
Fortune 500 company. It's the best of both worlds.

If you are a capable programmer and this opportunity sounds interesting to
you, we're looking forward to hearing from you!

Applicants only: recruiters must not submit on behalf of other people
through this link. Applications not submitted by candidates themselves are
rejected.

Fulltime, full benefits, stock, healthcare.

Mailto jobs at imdb.com

Please specify which position is appropriate for you: 
Software Developer/Database Specialist (Seattle) 
Software Developer (Seattle) 

We're looking forward to hearing from you!

Example questions that you might get asked to solve in an interview or
pre-interview phone call

These questions are deliberately vague or ambiguous - as a software
developer at IMDb you'd need to know how to ask questions to add rigor and
definition to them and then go on to solve them. If these feel
straightforward to you then you're probably a good candidate for us. These
questions are largely language neutral although our primary development
environment is Perl.

* Can you implement Bacon Numbers
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_number> ? What kind of data structures
would you use to implement them efficiently on a small and large database?

* Tags are a lightweight meta-data collection mechanism that can be
leveraged to allow end-users to classify items in an application with
their own vocabulary. What are the basic functions (including parameters)
that we should implement to support tagging? Can you provide a code sample
for the function that "adds tags"? Would what you've built be a good
architecture for implementing MoKA
<http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Keywords/> ? Why or why not?

* A customer can assert that our website is unresponsive for many reasons.
Name as many of as you can, and a plan of attack to disambiguate one
reason from another.

* What's a good plan of attack for merge-sorting N text files? How about
if the text files are known to be large? (megabytes each)? How about if
they are very large? (gigabytes/terabytes each). How does your plan change
if you don't know the size in advance?




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