Thought Delimited

My office, the Division of IT at the University of Maryland College Park, is looking to hire a new ColdFusion developer with a few years of application development experience under their belt and a solid grasp of modern application development concepts and techniques.

The official job posting is at https://jobs.umd.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=169954, but I thought that I would go ahead and provide some background on the posting and the work environment.

You would be part of a small team of developers working on-site (full-time telecommuting is not an option) building and maintaining a variety of ColdFusion-powered web applications at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD (just outside of Washington DC).  The applications we build are typically intranet and extranet applications commissioned by academic departments and administrative offices throughout the university.  Past applications include education assessment systems, voting and registration systems, applications to track workflow processes, and a custom CMS system.

Our server group is midway through the process of upgrading all of our ColdFusion servers from ColdFusion 7 to ColdFusion 9, and Oracle is our database of choice.  Our applications have been built with a variety of application frameworks (Fusebox 3/4, Model-Glue, FW/1) and utility frameworks (Reactor, Transfer, ColdSpring, jQuery), but some of our older/inherited applications do not utilize a framework or MVC principles. 

We handle the entirety of the application development process, from working with clients to shape the project and determine the requirements, to designing the visual layout and the database schema, to building the user interface with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and the back-end with ColdFusion and Oracle, and to delivering the completed project and providing bug fixes and additional maintenance as per our arrangement with the client.

Our plans for the future include making use of the features now available to us in ColdFusion 9, improving our development process so we can more effectively code as a team, and to optimize our web interfaces for use on smartphones and tablets where appropriate.

A university position such as this one comes with a solid benefits package, including a generous amount of leave time, excellent medical coverage, retirement plans, and a tuition remission option.  The university is closed during some federal holidays; the other federal holidays are deferred and used while the campus is closed between Christmas and New Years Day.

Unlike some government jobs, you will have complete administrative control over your work computer, so you can install whatever software helps you write and maintain code.

Although we charge for our work, we are not profit-driven, which allows us to focus on making quality software that our clients can use and maintain on their own.

The chief requirements for this position are as follows:

• 4 years of work experience designing, building, and administering strategic or high volume ColdFusion web applications for diverse audiences.

• Must be an experienced user of standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), have experience in using AJAX and at least one JavaScript framework such as jQuery or Ext JS, and be highly knowledgeable about current web design trends and techniques.

• Must have solid experience in designing database tables and efficient SQL queries: experience with writing queries against Oracle tables is preferred.

• Must possess strong verbal and written communication skills and have the ability to communicate effectively with both technical staff and non-technical clients.

Additional information about the skills and qualities we're looking for can be found on the official job posting.

If you do meet those qualifications, please make sure that your resume is written such that it is absolutely clear that you are qualified, even to a reader who isn't necessary a ColdFusion programmer.

I'm not allowed to speak about salary range, other than it's a decent salary (especially when combined with the university's benefits package) and will be commiserate with the experience of the applicant.

So if you're a good CF developer in the DC metro area who's been keeping up with the latest news and techniques in ColdFusion and web development in general, I encourage you to check out the official posting.