The Right People

The management team at Workbooks has successfully built two previous companies from startup into award-winning international businesses.  Our experience tells us the people who thrive in startups are highly motivated and talented individuals who deliver high quality work consistently.

Workbooks is developing a new application suite with a ‘clean sheet of paper’ which will be delivered to customers using the Software as a Service model.

We offer competitive salaries and stock options at an early stage start-up for the right people.  This is a rare opportunity to be involved at the start of an exciting new venture.

We are looking for motivated Software Development Engineers  to put the foundations in place for our new applications delivery platform. We are especially interested in talking to you if you have skills in Finance & CRM development, in Ruby on Rails development, or you are an experienced User Experience Engineer.

Software Development Engineer (Several Required)

Reporting To: Chief Technical Officer

Location: Reading, UK

Development of Web Graphical User Interfaces and supporting services for our scalable Linux based On-Demand services.

Alongside the rest of the software development team, implement an architecture and application infrastructure that will underpin all our applications for several years.  Use this to create customer-ready applications. Critical factors in the new system will be to:

  • Encourage consistency of software deliverables.
  • Permit frequent deliveries of new functionality at minimal risk to the platform.
  • Provide a highly productive environment in which to develop new features and functions.
  • Scale to support hundreds of thousands of concurrent users working for tens of thousands of companies.

You will be joining a team of world-class Linux/Unix application developers and will be at home developing applications on the Linux platform.

Key Responsibilities:

  • All stages of software development, from Requirements Analysis, Design and Implementation through to Testing and QA.
  • After first launch, assist as required in third-line customer support, working alongside members of the support team in resolving any complex customer issues that may arise. There will also be a periodic requirement for out-of-hours on-call support. Consistent and thorough, you will "go the extra mile" to resolve customer issues.

Experience and Skills:

Candidates should be able to demonstrate directly relevant experience such as below:

Required:

  • At least three (ideally five or more) years software development experience across the full software development lifecycle.
  • Motivated and excited by software technologies and willing to learn.
  • Strong development skills in one or more of Ruby, C/C++, Perl or Python.
  • Strong knowledge of Linux/Unix as an application development platform.
  • Experience of developing thin client Web based Graphical User Interfaces to high quality standards using Unix/Linux-based servers.
  • Understanding of client/server, distributed and object-oriented application development principles.
  • Good understanding of Graphical User Interface design principles and usability.
  • Problem solving, task prioritisation, communication, administration and organisation skills are required, whilst working to deadlines and adhering to quality assurance procedures.

Desirable:

  • Networking fundamentals as applied to building distributed applications.
  • Knowledge of object-oriented UI frameworks.
  • Thin client development using server side frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Java Servlets or JSP.
  • Client side JavaScript experience.
  • Automated GUI testing tools and approaches.
  • Web Application development using SQL databases.
  • Multi-tenanted systems and security.

Financial Software Development Engineer

Reporting To: Chief Technical Officer

Location: Reading, UK

Lead the design and development of financial applications for our scalable On-Demand services.

This is a key role at Workbooks, the individual is likely to have previously worked in senior development or latterly architecture roles for a supplier of accountancy software.

Working alongside the rest of the software development team the role is to implement a financial application architecture and initial application implementation. This system will be able to:

  • Permit frequent deliveries of new functionality at minimal risk to the platform.
  • Provide a highly productive environment in which to develop new features and functions.
  • Scale to support hundreds of thousands of concurrent users working for tens of thousands of companies.

You will be joining a team of world-class application developers and will be at home developing robust applications in a commercial environment.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Design authority for financial applications with Workbooks' suite of On-Demand applications.
  • All stages of software development, from Requirements Analysis, Design and Implementation through to Testing and QA.
  • After first launch, assist as required in third-line customer support, working alongside members of the support team in resolving any complex customer issues that may arise. There will also be a periodic requirement for out-of-hours on-call support. Consistent and thorough, you will "go the extra mile" to resolve customer issues.

Experience and Skills:

Candidates should be able to demonstrate directly relevant experience such as below:

Required:

  • Three or more years experience in a senior development or architecture role developing accountancy/financial application software.
  • Software development experience across the full software development lifecycle.
  • Strong inter-personal and team-working skills; able to evangelise and explain the financial application strategy.
  • Motivated and excited by software technologies and willing to learn.
  • Strong development skills in a modern structured programming language.
  • Understanding of client/server, distributed and object-oriented application development principles.
  • Good understanding of Graphical User Interface design principles and usability.
  • Problem solving, task prioritisation, communication, administration and organisation skills are required, whilst working to deadlines and adhering to quality assurance procedures.

Desirable:

  • Knowledge of object-oriented UI frameworks.
  • Thin client development using server side frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Java Servlets or JSP.
  • Experience of developing thin client Web based Graphical User Interfaces to high quality standards using Unix/Linux-based servers.
  • Automated GUI testing tools and approaches.
  • Web Application development using SQL databases.

 

User Experience Engineer

Reporting To: Chief Technical Officer

Location: Reading, UK

Lead the design of the User Interface for our new suite of on-demand applications.

You will be involved in every step of the development process to ensure a useful and usable web-based product - developing requirements, early prototyping, reviewing designs with stakeholders, and developing the final HTML / CSS / Javascript.

The ideal individual for this position is creative, independent, driven, a team player, and has great passion for designing a great user experience. You will be leading and involved in research to understand the underlying UI issues, information architecture, optimize task flow, look and feel, build prototypes, and conduct usability testing.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Researching and prioritising user needs and requirements.
  • Designing UI that supports users' goals and behaviors.
  • Conducting usability testing on the design.
  • UI consultations.
  • Advocate concepts and ideas from users' perspective among stakeholders.
  • Develop some of the HTML / CSS / JavaScript used in the applications.
  • Enhance and maintain style sheets and style-related JavaScript files.
  • Work directly with developers to solve HTML / CSS / JavaScript issues. Experience and Skills:

Candidates should be able to demonstrate directly relevant experience such as below:

  • Motivated and excited by software technologies and willing to learn.
  • Minimum of 5 years in UI design / development.
  • Knowledge of current UI design best practice.
  • The ability to work with stakeholders from different departments carrying different perspectives and considerations.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills; ability to organize and present information on screen and verbally with a team.
  • The ability to create simple, clear and elegant UI for complex applications to increase communication efficiency and enhance user experience.
  • Expert HTML, CSS skills. Good understanding of JavaScript. AJAX experience a plus.
  • Visual design skills a plus.
  • Attention to detail.
  • Demonstrated portfolio of work required.
  • Problem solving, task prioritisation, communication, administration and organisation skills are required, whilst working to deadlines and adhering to quality assurance procedures.
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