Front-end Designer / Developer

anywhere  ‐ Remote
This project has been archived and is not accepting more applications.
Browse open projects on our job board.

Description

We're looking for a front-end designer to help us build this platform. We're looking for someone who has a passion for software development, loves making things work well, and who thrives in a high-impact, low-ceremony startup environment.

In general, you would be responsible for:
  • designing and building component-based, reusable, modular designs for web, mobile, and e-mail user-agents
  • constructing new components and helping us solve difficult design problems
  • presenting information in a clear, effective, and straightforward way
  • writing SCSS, Haml, and very occasionally JavaScript


  • The initial project is to redesign our prototype administrative backend and to develop a design vocabulary of components we can use in other contexts on our site. From there, we'd like to work further with you on a number of other projects -- designing new interfaces for features we want to build, implementing ways of showing large amounts of relevant information, and others in the pipeline.

    This is a contract position that pays US$450 per day. Generally we'd expect you to work 2-3 weekdays per week and to have some time overlap with US ET (UTC-4/-5), but we otherwise care much more about the results you deliver than the hours you spend. We prefer that people work when they want to, not when a clock tells them to, so you don't need to keep track of your time other than to tell us how many days you worked in a particular week.

    Our technology
    We generally place a high premium on architectural and code simplicity, and try to minimize complexity at all levels.

    Our styles are a small custom theme built on top of Bootstrap 3 and Flatty, written in SCSS; the pages are in Haml and pipelines to HTML. JS usage is minimal; individual pages are largely static and an emphasis is on quick loads.

    We run a Padrino (https://github.com/padrino/padrino-framework) stack on Cloud66 and DigitalOcean. ActiveRecord 4 is used for the small number of models that interact with the database directly. The datastore is Postgresql 9.3 (http://www.postgresql.org/); we also use Redis (http://redis.io/) to store jobs for Resque.

    The architecture is likewise fairly simple: there's one load balancer, two web servers, one process server, and one Postgresql database. Our codebase is small right now, clocking in at around 1,500 lines including all models, controllers, and services.

    You can run all the tests (RSpec and Rubocop) with a single command, and you can deploy to production or any other environment with a single command.

    About you

    You:
  • are comfortable working with a remote team
  • are comfortable using tools like Google Hangout and Flowdock to collaborate with teammates
  • enjoy one of XKCD (http://xkcd.com/), SMBC (http://smbc-comics.com/), Model View Culture (http://modelviewculture.com/), or PBF
  • are a fan of DRY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself), STTCPW http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#The_Simplest_Thing_that_Could_Possibly_Work), and YAGNI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Ain%27t_Gonna_Need_It)


  • Your technical experience includes most or all of the following:
  • proficiency with SCSS, Haml, CSS3, and JavaScript
  • fluency and experience with writing modular, composable, reusable (S)CSS
  • ability to leverage your design experience in the context of an information-heavy application
  • constructing interactive components, controls, or interface elements
  • you understand and can use git to make commits on topic branches


  • Bonus points if:
  • you can point to public commits you've made on a project you like
  • you have written an interesting technical blog post, essay, rant, etc. that you can link to
  • you have worked at a startup before


  • About us
    UpHex (http://uphex.com) is a tiny, nascent SaaS company that helps marketing agencies monitor analytics for their clients.

    We're completely bootstrapped with a current runway of about 18 months. In August 2014 we also won a $50,000 grant from the state of Virginia's Commonwealth Research and Commercialization Fund. We're not charging our users anything during this trial phase, but we'd like to do so (very) soon.

    We're currently in the middle of a pilot with a few hundred brave customers. In total, they're sending us about 1,250,000 data points per day across a number of connected Twitter, Shopify, Facebook, and Google Analytics accounts. At the moment, we can effectively use only a fraction of that data. We need to make the interface we expose to users more usable before we can do some of the things we want to do.

    How to apply
    If you think you'd be a good fit, we'd love to hear from you! (Please, no recruiters or agencies -- individuals only.) To apply, send an e-mail to the address below that includes the following info:

  • the URLs for two companies or projects that you've previously worked on, along with a short description of what you did there and when
  • the URL of the most interesting thing you've read, listened to, or watched lately, along with a short description of why it's interesting to you
  • the URL of a commit that you made to a public project, or a commit that you think is particularly interesting


  • Please also include at least two of:
  • any public web presence (blog, portfolio site, Dribbble profile, et cetera)
  • your GitHub or Bitbucket account URL
  • your StackOverflow user profile URL
  • your LinkedIn profile URL
  • your Twitter handle
  • Start date
    ASAP
    From
    UpHex
    Published at
    12.06.2015
    Contact person:
    Freelancer Map
    Project ID:
    922985
    Contract type
    Freelance
    Workplace
    100 % remote
    To apply to this project you must log in.
    Register