Sunday, January 24, 2010

Looking For Part-Time Groovy/Grails Work

As you can see from my LinkedIn profile, I'm an experienced Java developer (starting with 1.0 and 1.1 in the Fall of 1997), who's done some work with Groovy and Grails.  Although I love Java the Platform, I've decided (like many others I know) to gradually shift my emphasis away from Java the Language.  I've decided to focus on Groovy for now, but I can easily imagine adding Scala to my portfolio as well.
So, here's my challenge: I have the good fortune to have long-term Java work for a client that takes up most, but not all of my time.  That means that if I were to take on new Grails (or straight Groovy) work, it would have to be part-time.  That really limits my options.  If I can't find paid part-time work, I'll probably try to contribute to an existing Grails plug-in.  I already author an open source Groovy project, but it's so small that it doesn't really push me to improve my skills.
Any other suggestions?

Update: I found just what I was looking for with Wingu, a startup in stealth mode creating next generation science applications on the web.  Last week, I started working for them a day a week.  I'm looking forward to some Groovy/Grails/Gradle goodness. :)  (reference to mrhaki only slightly intentional)
By the way, if you're looking for something similar and you live in the L.A. area, I just saw a post show up on LinkedIn.  If you're not a member of LinkedIn, here are the details (PDF) on the Extremely Heavy Industries website.  I'm not familiar at all with the company, so make sure to perform your standard due diligence.

Update (Mar. 2, 2010): Things with Wingu didn't work out. :(  I'm back to looking.  This time around I'll try to do a better job of figuring out whether I can perform useful work for the client with the limited number of hours I have available.

Update (Sept. 1, 2015): I took a full-time job with CarGurus.com back in June of 2013 and I've been very happy here. If you're in the Boston area, I highly recommend it as a place to work.

2 comments:

  1. Hi
    Have you considered finding part time groovy Grails work through upwork

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    Replies
    1. I did take a look at Elance (upwork's old name) and Guru.com at the time, but the jobs looked pretty crappy and underpaid. I've taken a full-time job at CarGurus, so it's no longer relevant to me. I'll update the post to reflect that.

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