Over the last month we have been in negotiations with Engine Yard to join their Partner Network. Today we are proud to announce that we have been accepted into the program and have become Engine Yard’s first Australian Partner. The partnership is a mutually beneficial arrangement that enables us to work together on projects that require the backing of a premier scalable Ruby on Rails hosting company.

We look forward to working with Engine Yard and are excited at the opportunities it will bring in 2010.

Oh, and we get to display a sexy badge :)

From prnewswire:

With the dramatic increase in the number of Ruby on Rails development firms, Engine Yard has launched the Engine Yard Partner Network to connect customers to a full range of application services for Ruby on Rails including design, development, deployment, and maintenance. Choosing an Engine Yard Partner with Engine Yard products and services helps deliver a highly available, scalable, secure application and a seamless end-to-end experience.

“The ecosystem of application development firms using Ruby on Rails is snowballing as more and more firms discover they can get more done in less time by switching to Rails,” said Marcy Campbell, VP of Sales and Business Development of Engine Yard. “We’re excited to offer our partners a complete, reliable platform for their Rails applications during and after development.”

Partner Network developers create applications using Ruby on Rails because they can deliver better applications faster and with higher quality. They rely on Engine Yard to provide the best platform, technologies, and services to deploy and manage applications in the cloud.

The Frontier Group is a boutique software development company based in West Perth. We have a strong focus on web software, and utilise Ruby on Rails.

Our development team has recently grown to eight staff and we’re looking to take on our first full time designer. Until now we’ve worked with design freelancers and subcontractors. Now we want to make a designer part of our team, allowing our developers to work closely with the interface expert. We need someone who’s part of our team and not just kicking the ball in the same direction.

Is this you?

We don’t micro-manage and we trust your design ability, so you’ll need to have a track record of delivering completed designs. You’ll have a few years commercial experience, probably working in a creative studio doing great but under-appreciated work.

This is your opportunity to jump-ship and drive the creative direction of a young, vibrant and passionate company.

You’ll care about pixel-perfect alignment, and will take pride in the quality of the HTML you use to reflect those designs. You’ll know how JavaScript can be used to enhance the web. You might even care about SASS and HAML, if you’re really cool.

You’ll keep up to date with current trends and care about using modern techniques and practices, as well as tools and technologies.

Your workload will be approximately broken down into:

• 50% web application
• 25% web site
• 25% other design

The other design component will include things like fashion (t-shirt design), art work and even interior design… anything colourful or creative that’s happening in our world will be your responsibility.

Using the right tools is important and we realise that. We don’t have a parent company dictating how we do things or what our “standard operating environment” is – you’ll get to make those decisions with us. We all use MacBook Pros for development, but you might want a new iMac, for example.

What we give you

• $76k per year salary
• 9% superannuation (on top of salary)
• $1k travel allowance per year (parking, bike servicing, public transport)
• Internet and mobile allowance ($80 each per month)
• Opportunities to work from home/flexi-time
• Private office (when we move to the new location mid-year, if preferred)
• Pay reviews every 6 months with no ceiling on earning potential

What you give us

• 38 hours per week
• Your creative genius

How to apply

Send an email to jobs@thefrontiergroup.com.au linking to your online portfolio. Please be clear how much of the design you are responsible for, or if it was a collaborative process with other creative types.

Prepare a list of four sites – two that have elements you like, and two that have elements you dislike. A critique of these, either in person or via the phone, will be part of the second round of interviews.

We’re going through a massive growth phase at the moment, which has seen us double our staff in the last few months. This spurt has been driven by our customers wanting more Frontiersmen to work on their projects. It’s a good problem to have, but it has also exposed a series of considerations.

Our growth until now has been very controlled and organic, in that we have always been reacting to our business’ needs. We have taken on development staff one at a time. This resulted in our team being stretched for a little while before we take on a new hire. For example, when we moved from two directors (and took on Mark, our first employee) it was because Adam and I were working at 150% capacity. When Mark joined us, and we could spread that 300% over three people. As we get bigger, the extra capacity a single person can supply is reduced, relative to the total capacity of the company. This is great because it means we don’t get pushed to 150% anymore, but also means we need to start taking on multiple hires at once.

Late last year we had James and Dan join us, and we’ve just wrapped up our interview process and have hired John, Jacques and Jordan. We’ve gone from five developers to seven, to ten.

Now we’re looking for a full-time designer too, to join our team and balance our logic and structure with creativity and colour.

This raises the following ethical consideration: is it OK to actively head-hunt staff from other organisations? What if they’re your competitors? What if they’re you competitors, but you’re part of a social community? I think there’s two main schools of thought.

Firstly, there’s the attitude that we live in a capitalist world where the dollar rules and everyone’s looking out for themselves. If you can offer better employment opportunities than your competitor, then that’s your commercial advantage. If The Frontier Group is able to offer a larger salary and greater career prospects than our competitors, it’s to our benefit. Is it unethical for us to leverage that advantage?

Counter-balancing that argument, I feel, is the idea that the relationship between a company and their employees is comparable to human romantic relationships. If the pretty girl at the bar has a ring on her finger, it’s not considered appropriate to hit on her. Do you thing that translates?

Are “married” (employed) staff off-limits, or is it a case of “all’s fair in love and war (and HR)”?