Website development is still an ever-evolving field and not every development gig is the same. To better explain what we’re looking for in our next Olive front-end developer, we’ve decided to share some of our ideal qualities.
The Specifics
Olive recruits talent who will succeed in a fast-paced, tight-knit, collaborative environment. Our ideal front-end developer is someone who will thrive in our studio, building the best work for our clients and enjoying themselves along the way. Agencies and their team makeup vary drastically. So while most front-end developers are focused, detail-oriented, and curious, we’re looking for something a little more specific. Someone who will complement our unique team. An Olive front-end developer…
… Lives and Breaths Front-End Development
Front-end development doesn’t have to consume your life, but as an Olive developer, you must love what you do. You enjoy all aspects of front-end work, from the most tedious tasks to the grandest projects. When you sleep, visions of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS dance in your head. You genuinely enjoy writing code, organizing code, and building with HTML5. (Bonus points if you’re fond of WordPress, our CMS of choice.) An Olive developer’s knowledge goes above and beyond basic development techniques. We need someone who has a curiosity for the newest techniques (CSS animations, anyone?) and a drive to learn the latest front-end tactics so we can produce ideal solutions for our clients. We need a developer who seeks out inspiration from a variety of sources and stays up-to-date on their skills.
… Is Prepared to Kick It Old School
It’s important to keep your skills current with the latest techniques, but we also need our developers to have a foundation of skills that can sometimes be viewed as old school. Email marketing is a valuable tool for our clients, and to ensure that their email campaigns display perfectly across a variety of email software, old and new, an Olive developer has to put on their parachute pants and get comfortable with some totally retro coding. Understanding these techniques is a narrow skill set to have, but it’s extremely important that our clients’ emails look great for their entire audience, no matter if they’re using Gmail, Apple Mail, or even Outlook 2003. If you enjoy balancing the old with the new, you’ll fit in just fine.
… Not Only Understands Responsive Design, But Believes in Its Benefits
Responsive design was once one of the latest trends you explored, but it’s now an approach to web design you advocate for. Olive & Company recommends responsive design to most of our clients as the answer to the growing number of devices and screen sizes, so it’s important for our developers to trust in this technique. As our front-end developer, you realize the importance of responsive design and understand what’s possible with this cutting-edge method. You understand what and what not to do when developing a responsive site and can confidently recommend great responsive solutions to our clients.
… Is Passionate About Good Design
You may be thinking, why do I have to care about design if this is a post for developers? If you’re asking that question, this position may not be the right fit for you. Design is an immense component of what we do here at Olive (after all, we are The Marketing Design Agency), and it’s important for every single Olive, no matter their role, to have a passion for all categories of design. We create interactive designs, print designs, and everything in between, so it’s important for you to understand the fundamentals that make them successful. An Olive designer grasps visual and UX design, and how they work together to create a harmonious result. A curiosity for all types of design speaks to your creativity and ability to collaborate closely with the design team from the very early stages of a project. As an Olive & Company developer, you understand the limitations and opportunities of designing for the web, and you’re able to advise the design team based on that knowledge.
… Understands the Balance Between Design and Development
This is the overarching quality we’re looking for, or the “big one” as you may prefer to call it. This is what Olive developers do best. Olive & Company’s primary goal is to create designs that truly work for our clients, their strategies, and their audiences. We create beautiful designs, but they fulfill a strategic purpose for our clients and must function properly when they’re transformed into a working website or email. As an Olive developer, you grasp the most important technical aspects of development, and you implement them within the framework of good design. Recognizing how code can affect, alter, or add to a design is essential to your job. Communicating those observations to the design team and working together to figure out how to implement the best possible designs is a huge part of what you’ll do here at Olive. A drive to create good designs that translate into effective marketing is an important quality of every Olive in the studio.
… Has a Versatile Work Style
While having technical and design skills is important, you won’t thrive at Olive unless you’re comfortable adapting to changing productivity demands and varying amounts of creative teamwork. We’re a small agency that meets as a group often and moves at a very fast pace. You must be equally independent and collaborative—organized enough to manage your individual time, yet comfortable working with other members of the Olive team on a regular basis. The ability to work on multiple projects at once, sometimes on very tight deadlines, and to change priorities quickly, is key to developing at Olive.
… Always Thinks Strategically
It’s probably clear by now that we’re looking for someone whose skills and interests go beyond simply writing code. We need a strategic thinker who keeps the clients and their needs in mind throughout every aspect of website development. This means taking an interest in information architecture (creating strategic site maps and page wireframes, planning application flows, etc.), understanding accessibility standards, optimizing websites for SEO, ensuring fast load times, understanding Google Analytics, testing sites back to IE8, and optimizing sites for all browsers and devices. Retaining a passion for making each client website function flawlessly while recognizing opportunities to improve them are strategic qualities we need in our developer. If you can think about the websites beyond their release and keep an ongoing relationship with clients, you’re exactly what we need.
… Embraces the Benefits of Working in a Small Agency
As much as we wish every single skilled developer wanted to be an Olive, we understand that working for a small agency isn’t for everybody. It’s a fast-paced environment that demands a lot of collaboration. It’s also relaxed and flexible—we break for Friday Fun-Time and soak up the sun with half-day Fridays in the summer. Because of our size, your input will be solicited often and your creativity will be appreciated, which isn’t common in larger, more siloed agencies. You’ll get to know everyone you work with and will be a vital member of a smart, creative team. If you’re interested in our industry, ready to stay up to date on your skills, and willing to share that knowledge with our team, you’ll thrive in Olive’s atmosphere.
Does this profile sound like it was written just for you? Apply for our front-end web developer job today.
