PHP Developers Wanted

eBay is the World's Online Marketplace. We provide a global online trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything. Counting 125 million users worldwide, eBay is one of the rare successful e-commerce companies, with an unprecedented record of profitable growth. To strengthen our Dutch eBay and Marktplaats team we are looking for an

Software Developer

Primary Job Responsibilities

• Define, design, and implement complex, multi-tier distributed software applications.
• Segment and design system layers to support componentized and layered application development, including user interface, business functionality, and database access.
• Work with other engineers, managers, Product Management, QA, and Operations teams to develop innovative solutions that meet market needs with respect to functionality, performance, scalability, reliability, realistic implementation schedules, and adherence to development goals and principles.
• Estimate engineering effort, plan implementation, and rollout system changes.
• Must be able to independently design, code and test major features, as well as work jointly with other team members to deliver complex changes.
• Share release management duties on feature rollouts.
• Develop industry and product technical expertise.

Job Requirements

• 3/4 years experience in requirements analysis, design, coding and unit testing of scalable, distributed, fault-tolerant applications in Web environments.
• Expertise required in object-oriented design methodology.
• Strong experience required in PHP application development (Marktplaats.nl is coded in PHP).
• In case of moderate experience in PHP application development: strong experience required in one or more of the following object oriented languages:
• Java
• C#
• VB.net
• Python
• Perl
• C++
• Strong knowledge of relational databases (preferably MySQL or Oracle), HTTP/HTML/JS/CSS, and basic LINUX system administration.
• Creativity, high energy, dedicated, results oriented person.
• Fluent in English (written and spoken).

Place of work

• The Marktplaats development team is located in Emmeloord but we are willing to consider Amsterdam as the place of work.

For more information, contact r.schuil@marktplaats.nl

Gezocht: Teamleider PHP Software Ontwikkeling

Marktplaats.nl is opgericht in 1999 en is het meest succesvolle handelsplatform in Nederland. Sinds de oprichting heeft Marktplaats.nl zich ontwikkeld tot de één van de meest populaire websites met een nog steeds groeiend aantal gebruikers. Marktplaats.nl heeft maandelijks ruim 6 miljoen unieke gebruikers die maandelijks één miljard page views genereren. Op elk moment bevinden zich op Marktplaats meer dan 3 miljoen advertenties in verschillende rubrieken, uiteenlopend van kleding tot computers en van auto’s tot verzamelvoorwerpen. Per dag worden er meer dan 125.000 advertenties geplaatst. Marktplaats.nl is de grootste, in Nederland ontwikkelde website! Sinds november 2004 is Marktplaats.nl een onderdeel van eBay Inc.

Om ons snel groeiende software ontwikkelingsteam in Amsterdam te versterken zijn wij op zoek naar een:

Teamleider Software Ontwikkeling

Verantwoordelijkheden:

• Resultaatgericht werken met andere ontwikkelaars, product managers, testers en operations teams om oplossingen te ontwikkelen die de marktbehoeftes vervullen met betrekking tot functionaliteit, performance, schaalbaarheid en betrouwbaarheid.
• Leiding geven aan, en coachen van 2-5 software ontwikkelaars
• Zelfstanding en in multifunctioneel teamverband ontwerpen, programmeren en testen van functionaliteiten.
• Definiëren, ontwerpen en implementeren van complexe, multi-tier distributed software applicaties.
• Segmenteren en ontwerpen van systeemlagen om het ontwikkelen van componenten en applicatielagen te faciliteren.
• Verantwoordelijkheden voor het managen en uitrollen van nieuwe versies van Marktplaats delen met andere ontwikkelaars.

Functie eisen:

• Bachelor of Masters in Computer Sciences of ander gerelateerd vakgebied
• 5+ jaar ervaring in het verzamelen van functionele eisen, ontwerpen van software, implementeren en unit testen van schaalbare, gedistribueerde, fout-tolerante applicaties in een webomgeving
• Expertise vereist in object georiënteerde software ontwikkeling
• Ervaring in een object georiënteerde programmeertaal zoals Java of C++
• Ervaring in het ontwikkelen van PHP is een pre
• Expertise in relationele databases (bij voorkeur MySQL of Oracle), HTTP/HTML/JS/CSS en basiskennis voor het werken met Linux systemen
• Creatief en resultaat gerichte professionele houding
• Uitstekende uitdrukkingsvaardigheid in zowel Engels als Nederlands (woord en geschrift)

Wij bieden:

• Een competitief salaris met een bonus plan en stock opties
• Werken met een zeer gemotiveerd team aan één van de grootste websites van Nederland
• Directe feedback van één van de grootste on-line communities in Nederland

Voor informatie neem contact op met r.schuil@marktplaats.nl

Google's Evil Crawler

Today my ISP, PimpMedia, contacted me about a webcrawler that was doing an extreme amount of requests in a very short time. The requests were coming from the IP address 208.66.194.166, which is owned by CMP Media.The crawler identified itself as Internet Explorer running on Windows XP. Here is the first line from the log:
208.66.194.166 - - [27/Sep/2006:13:48:50 +0200] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 76 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

What is this crawler that pretends to be Internet Explorer? Why is it scraping my website? Why does it need to do up to 5 requests per second?, I asked myself.

I searched Google for the C-address of the IP. It returned quite a lot of results where people are complaining about similar behavior at their sites. Here is a good example at DigitalPoint. People are blaming McColo for scraping, but nobody was able to tell why McColo would do this. So, I continued my search..

Once again, I searched Google. This time I searched for the whole IP address and went trough the list of results. The 10th result showed something surprising: looking at the cached version of the page I saw in the right menu: "Your IP: 208.66.194.166". Hmm. If I visit actual page, it shows my own IP address.
Ehrr... that makes me believe that the crawler that visited my website belongs to Google? But why does Google pretends to be Internet Explorer on Windows XP? Why doesn't the robot identify as Googlebot, and why are they doing such an insane amount of requests? Clearly, I'm not the first person complaining, but it seems to be that I'm the first person blaming Google for this.
Am I right? Does Google have "stealth" crawlers which basically perform a DoS-attack on your website? Or is there another explaination...? But if it isn't Google, how could you explain that that IP address shows up on the cached page in Google?
To be continued...

Weird Google Site Search Results

My collegue Harald made me aware of a problem at Google.com. When searching for a specific domain (site:xyz.com) Google also returns a few results from what looks like random domains. Very often these include splogs (spam weblogs) and other MFA (Made For Adsense) websites. I found that it only occurs if you're not logged into your Google account.
What are those guys at Google doing?!