Flex Engineers

Question: Are you among the elite?

Okay, so you know where the action is - but maybe you're watching from the sidelines. Today's elite Flex developers create great user experiences with great business impact. These applications won't just be used. They'll be studied. They represent best practices.

Except it's not practice. It's real - at least for some. But what about you? Are you creating (and having) great experiences where you work? What if you're ready for more, but your current work environment is not ready for you?

Perhaps you …

• Want the personal freedom to live anywhere
• Enjoy lively technical discussions (online and off)
• Dislike solving the same problems again and again
• Like working on a variety of projects with diverse teams and clients
• Find yourself being the "go to" person when your team gets in over its head
• Feel comfortable discussing issues in depth like

  	Event-driven communication
  	Cairngorm's implementation of MVC
  	Coding for reusability
  	Flex framework nuances
  	Flash player GC

Then you should talk to us, Universal Mind. We build rich Internet applications for companies who are tech-savvy enough to know when they need help - in industries like software, financial services, and consumer products. Long before there was Flex, we were doing state-of-the-art rich application development for them in Java, ColdFusion, and Flash. We're those people who technology experts call when they have a technology problem.

We are the elite. We have to be. That's why clients hire us. Our people perform at a level ordinary developers can't reach - or prefer not to try. So the developers that do work here know they'll be given no ordinary projects.

These are developers who …

• Have excellent interpersonal skills
• Collaborate well in person, on the phone, or online
• Tune in habitually to what the best minds in Flex are up to
• Value drawing from and contributing to a highly skilled team
• Aggressively pursue independent learning to keep skills sharp
• Learn accepted methods even if they have their own (and most do)
• Have deep knowledge of:

  	AS3 component lifecycle
  	CSS/skining when given appropriate assets
  	Agile test driven development methodologies
  	Software versioning and project management, ideally with trac/SVN

Does this sound like you? Then tell us how you like to approach a Flex project - and what in your background makes you feel that way. Did you come over from J2EE? Was that because you love Java but hate Swing? Or maybe Cairngorm felt like an old friend introducing you to Flex. (That's good - especially if you already know MVC frameworks, like Struts, and have used JSPs.)

Or maybe you're a Flasher - either a programmer with design skills or a designer with programming skills. You were making rich Internet applications before Flex came along - and now you're happy you no longer have to. So would you consider yourself a component junkie? (That's good too - especially if you know the component lifecycle like the back of your hand.)

But whoever you are, you know the underpinnings of the major component classes; you know how they work; and you'll extend them as needed. You want to go beyond applications that have a "Flex look" to them. Just plugging data sources into charting components is not what you live for. So you're not afraid to tailor Flex charting components to get a better result - even if that means extending the charting classes or using item renderers.

Think about it. Think how great it would feel to work among your own kind … yet have clients like you so much we have to pry you loose when it's time for you to go. Maybe now is that time. Or would you rather stay on the sidelines?

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