Cinch is an early stage Silicon Valley stealth mode startup developing an online service for merchants and consumers.

Cinch weaves together consumer intent, payments, promotions, rewards and long-tail merchants using semantic processing, personalization, ruby and rails.
Agile to the Max

Working with Pivotal Labs we have created the pilot service and application. Programmers who join now will be paired with a Pivotal Labs developer. Eventually all Cinch programmers will be familar with the Pivotal Agile engineering process and we will have our team of extreme programmers.

The Pivotal Agile Process is:

* Focused on speed, quality, feedback and iteration based on Extreme Programming
* Behavior/Test Driven Development with tools like RSpec, Test::Unit, JUnit, JsUnit and Selenium. And of course, the tests get written first!
* Pair programming. Two heads are better than one, so a pair on every problem. A pair works better, smarter, and faster than a loner.
* Continuous Integration. Automated tools run exhaustive, multifaceted suite of tests every time a piece of code in a project is changed. This catches defects as early as possible, and ensures that high quality is maintained over the life of the project.

The Best Tools for the Job

The core of the services and application is being implemented primarily in Ruby using frameworks and tools such as Ruby on Rails.

But different elements may require different tools, so Java has been used to implement the payment backend and it may turn out best to use Lisp or other languages for some of the semantic processing.

The ideal candidate is comfortable working in different environments as required and ideas of using different tools will be welcome.
The characteristics and attributes we look for in developers

* Experienced and/or comfortable with Agile Development
* Worked on large projects with small teams
* Done at least one Ruby on Rails project (of course the more the better)
* Has made some contribution in an Open Source Community
* Is competent and creative across several domains
* Not afraid to be hands on and "do what it takes"
* Degrees are not as important as accomplishments
* Plays well with others
* Wants to help create outstanding products and a fabulous place to work

We are hiring Agile developers right now. If you believe you are in the upper 10th percentile of developers and you have a good mix of the characteristics above we would love to talk with you.