Kathy Walrath's Blog

Now Hiring

The client group in Java SE-land is looking for someone smart enough to automate themselves out of a good job — and into an even better one.

Some Background

Currently, whenever a client team (Swing, 2D, AWT, etc.) needs to integrate its changes into the main Java SE workspace, the team's integrator does the job. The integrator is just an engineer on the team — generally someone without any special skills pertaining to build automation and process improvement. I don't know about the other client teams, but on the Swing team the integration job traditionally is rotated through every engineer on the team (including leads), with each engineer having a 6-month stint as integrator. The Swing integrator is currently moi*.

* "Moi" means "me", as my 4-year-old French-American niece says it. Actually, she usually says "pas moi" ("not me"). For example: "Who hid Daddy's wallet?" "Pas moi."

The Position

The client group has opened a position for a person to do all the integrations for all the client teams. We're looking for someone who's smart, skilled, and enterprising enough to improve the current build procedures. Our hope is that the integrator will automate the process so much that they'll be able to transition to doing something else they're interested in, such as client-related development. In the end, we'd have a better, more reliable build process, plus we'd gain many engineer hours that were formerly spent on integrations.

If you look at the page for req # 543803, you can see that the experience level for the job is wide open. What we care about are the candidates' skills* — their ability to perform what the job page calls essential functions — and their capacity to contribute in other ways once integrations no longer take up all their time.

* Who has these skills? Pas moi.

Apply!

If you have what it takes to do this job, please submit your resume. Good luck!

Comments

• Pas moi aussi Kat,

  mais <ahem> however, it is very nice to see Sun actively hiring again! :-) </ahem>

  Meilleurs amitié,

  Jean (aka JohnC)

  Posted by: cajo on September 26, 2005 at 09:43 PM

• Enfin un peu de français à Santa Clara, ça fait plaisir :)

  Posted by: gfx on September 27, 2005 at 01:09 AM

• You may start with making the workers use Darcs for their content revision system. This already automates 90% of what the job asks another person to do.
  Including the running of unit tests prior to commit, and/or, when properly setup, you can email the patch (typing only 'darcs send') and have the effect of running the unit tests prior to accepting a new patch into the main repository.

  Good luck, and have fun!

  Posted by: zander on September 27, 2005 at 07:01 AM

• Y'a beaucoup de français ici ?

  Posted by: loyl on September 27, 2005 at 01:02 PM

• Mhm, autotools! ;)
  I can only come up with 5 of the ten platforms: x86-linux, x86-win32, amd64-linux, amd64-solaris and sparc-solaris. What are the other five?

  cheers,
  dalibor topic

  Posted by: robilad on September 28, 2005 at 04:03 AM

• To zander: I hope our new integrator looks into Darcs. There is a certain amount of inertia in a software group of J2SE's size that makes changing tools difficult, but you never know what can happen when you have a smart person with a good case.

  
  To dalibor topic: Swing doesn't build on that many platforms, but of course the 2D and AWT teams have to worry about the platforms much more. The 2D manager told me there are some additional permutations on the platforms you listed (e.g. Solaris Sparc 64), and then there are different configurations that conspire to make life interesting (e.g. different linuxes such as SuSE, Red Hat, and Sun Java Desktop System).

  
  To the francophones: I was hoping my Frenchified brother would be able to provide me with some witty words to say to you, but he didn't come through. C'est la vie.

  Posted by: walrath on September 28, 2005 at 03:48 PM

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