Atomic Software, Inc. App Developer February 2013
App Developer
***Please note: this position is considered a full-time paid internship — it is open to a current ITP student or a recent grad and may lead to a full-time ongoing opportunity.
– About Atomic
Atomic makes apps for reading. Our mission is to create better ways to read, better ways to learn to read, and better ways for people to connect about reading. We design and build phone, tablet, and web apps that are powered by books. We help publishers develop cloud-based services that provide digital book content to power our apps. And we develop easy-to-use internal systems that produce book content digitally, right from the start. We’ve been working on our own and for Random House, Scholastic, Harcourt, and Pearson, but our best projects are happening today, as you read this, in DUMBO, with a waterfront view of Manhattan and all the Brooklyn Roasting Company coffee that you need.
– The Position
We are expanding a team of innovative product creators, who can invent, spec, prototype, and build great digital products. Your job at Atomic will be to bring complete digital products to market: Atomic is a small company that builds big, so we need smart people who can start at the beginning of a product and see through every task to completion. For this position, we are looking for both interest and skill in creating and coding great interfaces
for mobile apps. But we especially want programmers who understand computer science fundamentals, who see the beauty in elegant code, and who have an appreciation for how every technical decision could affect the end user’s experience.
– Engineering Requirements
• Understand the value of a disciplined engineering practice for the long-term evolution of a digital product.
• Have some experience with software source code revision control systems, especially Git.
• Quickly adapt to a new programming language or platform depending on the needs of the project.
• Commit to understanding the true underlying cause of a software bug instead of more simply treating the symptoms of the bug.
• Understand computer science fundamentals, and readily use them to solve problems.
• Take pride in producing code that can be explained to and maintained by other programmers.
– Programming Skills
• Familiarity with Objective-C for iOS programming, or a background in C or C++.
• Familiarity with memory management techniques, beyond ARC or garbage collection.
• Good skills in HTML5 tools for mobile development.
• Familiarity with XML, XSL, XPath, DTDs and XML Schemas.
• Knowledge of SQL and databases, especially Oracle, MySQL, and SQLite.
• Familiarity with client/server architectures.
• Ability to work on the Unix command line.
– User Experience Design Background
• Can work on a deadline to wireframe a series of related screens using tools like Balsamiq Mockups.
• Can use paper prototypes and visual wireframes to understand and communicate how a user would accomplish different tasks.
• Can take the graphical work of designers and implement it functionally, making adjustments in tools like Photoshop, Fireworks, or the GIMP when needed.
If you feel like you don’t know enough of the engineering, programming, or design skills above, but you like to learn and you’re committed to great work, apply. We’ll hire smart over experienced any day of the week!
– Conceptual Skills
You must be able to:
• Consider a digital product from the perspective of its users, especially students and teachers
in elementary classrooms.
• An interest in mobile games, especially as they can be used in learning.
• Combine technical expertise with the ability to speak your mind, think critically, and find the simpler, more elegant way to get the job done.
• Take pride in your work and be able to explain to anyone — client, engineer, or executive — exactly why it’s great.
• Recognize when you could have done a better job and take action to improve things.
• Listen to the end-user or client thoughtfully, address the user’s concerns, and respond with what courses of action are available or preferred.
• Be brilliant within a team of other brilliant people.
These conceptual skills are not after-thoughts: we consider them as much part of the job description as any of the design or engineering skills listed above.
– To Apply
Send a resume and your favorite kind of cookie (we eat a lot of cookies here) to
aisforatomic@atomicsoftware.