Interaction Designer / Front-End Developer

You have a passion for designing beautiful and effective user experiences but are also able to hold your ground when it comes to coding in JavaScript and PHP.

StudyPortals is publisher...

...of a set of leading pan-European study choice websites: MastersPortal.eu, PhDportal.eu, BachelorsPortal.eu, ShortCoursesPortal.eu, ScholarshipPortal.eu and STeXX.eu. On our portals, students can find and compare education opportunities across the borders of the Europe.

The higher education system in Europe is changing rapidly and with this has come a large information need for students, as well as a marketing need for universities. Propelled by this booming market our websites are growing fast: We currently receive over 1,500,000 visits per month. Universities can list their information for free and use effective advertising services, we provide best-value results and have therefore grown to over 960 participating universities in 39 countries.

StudyPortals started out in 2007 and has been outperforming expectations ever since. The team now consists of 25 people, with its main office in Eindhoven. StudyPortals has its roots in the world of international student associations and still maintains a unique position here. This close connection to the target group is one of the drivers for success.

Driven by its large potential and supported by venture capital, StudyPortals is in the middle of a significant expansion, more than doubling its capacity, with a quadrupling of its funds utilised so far. The whole team is determined to realise a comprehensive, well known, study choice platform that the European market needs.

Position

For our development team consisting of four PHP developers and a designer we are looking for a dedicated front-end developer. As our first full-time “fronteer" you will play an important role in improving the user experience offered on our websites.
Up until now, the development of our website front-ends was handled collaboratively by our PHP developers and designer. In order to further improve upon our user experience, we are now looking for a dedicated front-end developer to take care of building the best possible user interfaces for our websites.

As front-end developer you will be responsible for taking design ideas for both new and existing features and using our PHP API and your knowledge of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript to turn them into beautiful and effective user experiences. You will work together with our designer, PHP programmers and the sales team in order to realise the best solutions possible.

Initially you will focus on refining existing functionality in order to make its experience more satisfying for our visitors. After time there is the opportunity to grow into a more all-round position where you, together with internal and external stakeholders, create new features from the ground up.
As front-end developer you have a good grasp of where the Web is going and what’s happing in the field of user interface design. Sharing these insights with the rest of our team and using them to develop new, innovative, features will be an important part of our future success in offering an even more compelling user experience.

Profile

• You are able to write valid and semantically correct HTML5;
• You know the “C” in CSS3 stands for “cascading” and you understand what this implies for your style-sheets;
• You have a strong knowledge of JavaScript. Not only are you intimately familiar with jQuery and MooTools, but you are also able to extend upon these framework;
• You are able to write object-oriented PHP 5.3. As front-end developer you will mostly interface with our, well-documented, PHP API. As such we are not looking for a hard-core PHP/MySQL coder, but you should be able to utilise our API to realise your designs;
• You strive to stay informed of the rapidly changing browser landscape and as such are able to design for tomorrow’s technologies today;
• You work well in a structured development environment where the proper use of version-control and a bug-tracker are considered of paramount importance;
• You have impressive problem-solving skills and pride yourself in finding the best solution for any technical problem you might encounter;
• You have a drive to improve both yourself and the quality of the work you deliver, you like to be at the cutting-edge of the technologies you work with;
• Fluency in English, both oral as written, and excellent communication skills;
• Ambition, energetic and an entrepreneurial drive, you can work well independently but also in a team and you are fun to work with.

We are looking for a person with at least a Bachelor’s degree, typically in Computer Science or a related field. If you feel you are the person we are looking for and have enthusiasm for what we do, but you have a degree in a different field, please do not hesitate to apply.

Our Offer

• A fulltime position;
• Competitive salary including a bonus scheme;
• Informal, entrepreneurial, international and flexible atmosphere where self-initiative is highly appreciated;
• Apart from your contribution to the company, your personal development has high priority;
• Our office in the centre of Eindhoven (Strijp-S), five minutes from the central station;
• Interesting extras such as a laptop of your choice and a personal development budget;
• Possibility to grow along with the company;
• The opportunity to introduce a new discipline within our development team and be the driver of many important enhancements to our products’ user experience.