Lead Developer / Development Manager wanted for Online Travel Co

Lead Developer / Development Manager 

Our online travel company http://www.discoverafricagroup.com/ (est. 2002) requires an experienced senior developer to manage the in-house development team and play a lead role in all digital projects.

You will be responsible for enhancing and fine-tuning the companies e-commerce travel websites and their accompanying web applications; primarily from a technical/architecture perspective, but also from a UX, SEO and Conversion Optimisation perspective.

You will apply your mind to identifying and implementing efficiencies into the back-office business systems/procedures through the use of technology.

In this role, you will not be coding 24-7. Those days are behind you. In this role you will focus on defining effective solutions that deliver a positive ROI to the company bottom line. You will endeavour to get the best out of your dev team. You will still “get your hands dirty” by ensuring strict code standards are met, code reviews with juniors and taking a lead dev role for specifically complex coding tasks.

Our environment: LAMP, Expression Engine, CodeIgnitor. We interface with 3rd party travel and social APIs.

We love applying best practice technology to the online travel vertical, so that we can get more foreigners discovering (and returning to) Africa.

Requirements:

* 5-10 years experience in web development
* Min 1 year as team leader
* Strong: OO programming, PHP, MySQL, DB design, SOAP/REST/XML, working with 3rd party APIs
* Good: XHTML, CSS, JS
* Basic/Exposure to: Web Design, UX, SEO, Conversion Optimisation, Analytics, E-commerce, Strategy
* Basic Linux and web hosting experience
* SVN/GIT or other version control system
* Experience with various CMS platforms (Expression Engine a bonus)
* Project management experience
* Ability to mentor and motivate team
* Good communicator – written and verbal

Duties and responsibilities:

* Development and deployment of web applications, with best practise technical architecture, UX, SEO and Conversion Optimisation
* Identify areas within the business, that can be improved through the use of technology
* Define solutions and implement with your dev team
* Document user requirements, technical specs
* Define project scope, sprints, timelines and deadlines
* Managing the dev team to ensure projects are on time and to spec
* QA of final products
* User testing
* Ensure office IT, development and hosting environment is secure, stable and effective
* Manage IT / development budget

Position Available:

* 1 Feb 2012
* Send CV's to careers@discoverafricagroup.com