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Job Detailed
Job Details for LM347P
| Software Engineers x4 |
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| Posted By |
Lee McCormack |
| Date Posted |
Monday, November 10, 2008 |
| Description |
My client’s operation in Ruscombe has its origins in a company called Ridgeway. Established in ’99 Ridgeway developed software solutions targeted at the developing Video over IP infrastructure. In 2004 my client bought the company for its IPR and the core team of six engineers. With the substantial support my client has provided, the UK operation has done exceptionally well, doubling its turnover every year. Revenues for 2007 were $20m and this rate of increase is set to continue.
The company was named as one of the Sunday Times' "Best Small Companies to work for" in 2007 and 2008.
My client has become a specialist R&D centre for the design and implementation of video conferencing infrastructure solutions. Their key product is the current Video Communications Server (VCS). This consolidates the functionality of two earlier offerings. It can be thought of as a PBX for video calls and it is capable of handling two thousand five hundred end points and five hundred concurrent calls (these vary from simple video phones to top end HD video conference room facilities). The product is the most sophisticated on the market. In addition to its PBX-like functionality the VCS provides secure routing of video across a company’s firewall.
The VCS is built on proprietary PC technology, it runs an in house version of Linux and almost all the development is done in C++. As this is PC-based it is not strictly speaking embedded code that is developed, it is better described as systems level. The VCS is designed to be highly reliable and can be managed remotely through a web interface.
All the work undertaken is software in nature. The team is currently 23 strong and looking to grow by 30% the test and development capability over the next 12 months in order to consolidate the company’s position as a leading provider of video infrastructure.
We currently have vacancies for:
·Software Engineers (TD02) ideally graduate entry level. To a salary maximum of £40k
Company Structure
The operation in the UK is pure R&D and the vast majority of the team are highly technical. They are organised in to four informal development teams, who work closely with the small test group. Supporting them is a Technical Author, Product Support Engineer, Product Manager, and Operations Manager. The UK Development Director runs the group. The team works closely with colleagues in TANDBERG’s Oslo offices, with whom there is daily contact. Most engineers travel to Oslo at least three times a year in order to liaise with the R&D office there where desktop and high end endpoints are developed
The technical story.
The challenges are ongoing. As video calls become increasingly the norm, the product will need to scale up to handle a similar number of end points to a telephone PBX (Typical top end telephone systems will handle 100,000 handsets). There are interoperability issues to address as there are two standards in use SIP and H.323, plus an ongoing drive to add features on the system (for example incorporating URI dialling (this is where you enter a person’s email address and that is used to connect to them). They also want to improve the usability of the Web interface.
My client has a creative environment and at the end of each software release cycle my client has a two week period of unstructured work. This is a time for each engineer to engage in personal R&D projects that he/she feels are worthy of exploration. Some will fix issues that they have not previously had time to look at. Some will pursue ideas that they feel could be incorporated into future versions of the product.
Development philosophy
The heart of the development approach is the regression network. This is a test framework, which builds the latest version of the product every hour, installs it on the network and runs a suite of tests. This is designed to catch issues early and provides a sanity check. A more extensive range of tests is run each night on the day’s code and over the weekend some five hundred test scenarios will be run. This approach was initiated many years ago before test driven development or ‘agile’ were recognised terms. However, these plus other aspects of Agile development are ideas that my client draws on. The ethos is to automate everything, for example the API documentation is generated from the code and a set of release engineering scripts automate the final delivery of the software image in to production.
Working out of a common code base with the development team in Oslo, the UK team has the ability to affect products produced in Oslo and also to pick up changes made by other development teams. In this fluid environment the regression test suite becomes even more valuable.
Software Engineers x 4 from graduate entry level ideally to a salary maximum of £40k (graduate starting salary £31k + £1K per term final year bursary for those who apply before leaving university)
The development group at my client is divided into four small teams, each of which has complete responsibility for designing and implementing features relevant to a particular set of customers. This means that developers can find themselves working on network protocol code one day and web interfaces the next, rather than getting pigeon holed in a particular role.
We are looking to recruit a number of graduates. Of interest will be individuals who are graduating this year and those with post graduate commercial experience, whose salary expectations fit within the range specified.
Working on a bespoke Linux platform, you will join one of the above small teams and be involved in the design and implementation of product features from day one.
Duties and responsibilities
·Design and implementation of new features
·Maintenance of current product
·Working with QA group to ensure product quality
·Liaising with other groups within my client to ensure usability of cross-product features
Mandatory skills
British educated candidates must have achieved a 2i or 1st class honours degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Science and Maths, from one of the UK’s top universities. Those educated outside the UK need to have achieved the same standard.
We are not mandating experience of a specific programming language (although anyone recruited must be happy to use C++). However the work is of a low level systems nature and applicants with commercial experience should be able to demonstrate an interest in, and aptitude for work of this nature.
Desirable skills
·Knowledge of C++, Python and object oriented programming
·Strong interest in event driven network programming
·Knowledge of system software
Send your CV to lmccormack@gts-uk.com to secure an early interview
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| Salary |
£41,000 |
| Job Type |
Permanent |
| Location |
Ruscombe, Reading Berkshire |
| Country |
United Kingdom |
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