Hyves is looking for a Core Developer

Social Network Company in the center in Amsterdam - Europe.

Hyves operates according to a SCRUM Agile Development process. The focus is on great and working code and applications, so UML and deliberation are means to an end. Deploy cycles are short and the progress is fast: Ideas you have today, can be online in weeks. The software you write or modify will be used by millions of people every month.

Software Development @ Hyves:

• Means you can spend 80% of your time doing real coding. And everything deployed will be used by 10 million people.
• Requires a deep understanding of technology and deploy, on the same level as your colleagues.
• You will contribute to the design and development of new software components and new functionality visible for millions of users.
• You realize that constantly improving the usability of a high volume social network is essential to its long-term wellbeing, and will enjoy contributing to improving the ease-of-use of our pages and forms and carrying out UI adjustments and optimizations
• You understand that a certain portion of each product’s development effort goes into maintenance – bugfixing, addressing technical dept, refactoring, increasing automated test coverage – and are ready to contribute to this activity.

Desired Skills & Experience:

• Minimum degree:  Master of Science in Computer Science or equivalent field
• IT knowledge and understanding of operating systems, networks and databases
• Software engineering experience, preferably in creating high scalable web applications
• Knowledge of and experience with modern OO languages like Java, C# or Ruby
• Experience with Linux, App servers, LAMP, MySQL (or PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, Oracle, etc.)
• OO design experience and up-to-date knowledge of design patterns and UML
• Experience with WEB 2.0 (i.e. AJAX and Javascript frameworks jQuery, DOJO, Prototype)
• Bonus: Hands on with NGINX, Python, Redis, Memcached, Propel or Smarty
• Flexibility in choice of technology and able to switch between languages and technologies
• Quick and continuous learner with up to date skills and eager to broaden technical horizons
• Proficient English speaker
• You value a multi-cultured environment where English is the working language and you easily get on with people from different cultural backgrounds

Company Description:

Hyves runs a substantial operation in terms of volume, with over 6,1 million monthly visitors on the web, and 1,6 million on mobile, 7,5 million chat messages every day and ±3500 servers. The main technology stack is PHP, Python, NGINX, MySQL and Memcached running on Gentoo. High-volume key-value stores such as Redis take care of persistency, Node.js is used for real-time updates; Hadoop is used for massive parallel processing. The services we provide include toolbars (FF/IE), desktop clients (Qt C++), several mobile clients (iPhone/Android/Blackberry) and the OpenSocial API.

Some of our opinions about Software Development:

• The problem defines the programming language and not the other way around. C++ and Java versus Python, Ruby and PHP: it is a matter of the problem domain
• For Software Developers it is necessary to learn a new programming language every two years. If you’ve been doing a lot of MySQL, try NoSQL. If you’ve been doing a lot of Web Development, try Android. Stay sharp, you don’t want to end up on the Cobol graveyard
• Optimizing efficiency and productivity is a constant focus. Nothing more annoying than slow systems, poor unit testing facilities or patching bad code instead of refactoring
• In addition:
• We believe management exits to facilitate the best possible work condition
• Decision-making doesn’t require going through several management layers
• We don’t have 100 people in a loud open space, but team rooms with max. 5 people
• You can order any laptop or workstation you want, with up to 3 screens

Moving to the Netherlands???

The position is fulltime, based at our office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Hyves employs programmers from all over the world, and will help you with relocation, housing, paperwork and the language.

For all our vacancies, see