Career Opportunities at Sampa

Sampa is a technology startup by all definitions. We are not afraid of experimenting, including challenging common wisdom about user's needs. We move fast, learn fast, and apply that learning back into improving the product and the business. We like many aspects of Agile development. We ship our product multiple times per month, which give us a unique advantage to respond to market and customer demands. Sampa is a small team of insanely customer-focused experienced business and technology people who believe the problem we are solving for our customers is more important than the technology behind it (it's the pudding!). We expect each employee and contractor of Sampa to excel in their area of ownership, but also to contribute and give feedback on all areas of the business, from the technology to the UI, from marketing to recruiting.

We'll hire the best people who will make a difference in the business, have the best cultural fit to the way we work and think and believe in our vision.

All positions are for Redmond, WA, USA.

We are looking for a hands-on VP of Engineering who is capable of expanding the product, keeping the product and the company technology infrastructure running, and doing the management tasks that come with the job, including recruiting, managing people, product strategy, etc.

On the product front, you'll need to be capable of converting customers' needs into a technical design that scales accordingly to the business needs, then convert it into code (C#), test it, and ship it. You'll also need to be able to manage all aspects of product development, from managing source control to bug tracking, backups, customer support system, deployment, etc.

To maintain our infrastructure, you should be familiar with Microsoft server technologies (Windows 2003, SQL 2005, IIS, Exchange, etc.) and be very competent at network protocols (IP, DNS, HTTP, etc.).

Sampa is small, so you won't have unlimited resources like in BigCo and you'll need to be smart to find the most cost- and time-effective way of getting things done. Over time, you'll need to be able to shift into a more managerial role, which includes growing the team, defining long term product and business strategies, defining schedules and deliverables, etc.

If you are passionate about creating great customer value through the tasks above, we would love to hear from you. Ideally, you must have done all or most the things above before -- a few successes are great, but we also value past failures.

To contact us about this position, send an email with your resume and the source code for the code challenge below to jobs@sampa.com.

We are looking for an experienced developer who is capable of delivering customer features end-to-end. This means understanding the business and customer needs, defining and specifying the scope of work, implementing it, testing it, shipping it and answering customer support queries to apply the learning into improving the feature. You'll need to be able to work independently and fit well into a culture of shipping often and moving fast. You cannot be afraid of change.

You'll do most of the development in C# (but not ASP.NET) with sprinkles of HTML and JavaScript, and you'll need to be proficient with the tools of the trade.

Most of the time you won't have any spec to look for guidance and not even a competitor to see how they did it, so you'll need to be very creative at solving customers' problems. You won't have a tester either, thus your code must be at shipping quality at each check-in.

Almost all features in Sampa will involve some browser code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), some front-end code and some back-end code. You must have breadth of knowledge, without sacrificing depth. We are not afraid of throwing out code and starting from scratch, but most code you'll be doing is for brand new features, including mashups with partners, video integration, domain names management, billing system, and much more. You'll be able to pick and choose between many features from our high priority list.

As a startup developer, you'll need to understand the compromises between shipping the ideal code/feature/component against the business needs. And since we are on the topic of startups, you should know that you'll be asked to participate in things outside of the realm of software development.

If you are passionate about creating great customer value through the tasks above, we would love to hear from you. Ideally, you must have done all or most the things above before -- a few successes are great, but we also value past failures.

To contact us about this position, send an email with your resume and the source code for the code challenge below to jobs@sampa.com.

Suppose you are writing a family tree application and the input for birth date supports the regular date format as in "mm/dd/yyyy" format but also supports "?" where the user doesn't know the date part exactly. Some examples:

• "1/14/2006" is a precise date since it has no "?"
• "8/27/1891?" - the day is 27, the month is August, but the year is circa 1891
• "6/17/?" - means the year is unknown, but the birthday is June 17th

To store this data in the database, we'll use an unsigned integer. Write two methods in C# to convert this data. One converts from string into UInt; the other converts it back. You should not use any built-in or framework Date manipulation functions or Regular Expressions.

This challenge is intended to give you an opportunity to take your time to solve a coding problem without the time and white-board pressure involved in a face-to-face interview. This is part of the interview process and we expect you to deliver code "ready to ship."