Software Engineer Seattle, WA

We're looking for an exceptionally strong software engineer, grounded with good fundamentals in data structures, problem solving, algorithm design and distributed computing to help build our core service offering. The ideal candidate will have the following attributes:

* 3 to 6 years of professional software engineering experience

* Demonstrated strength and productivity with at least one strictly typed, object oriented language like C++ or Java

* Comfortable working with at least one dynamically typed scripting language like Ruby, Python, Perl or Smalltalk

* Competent working with multiple database technologies including RDBMS, Berkeley DB's, etc.

* Comfortable working with XML including XQuery and XPath

* Comfortable working in a hetergenous development environment where you'll be working with multiple development languages and technologies

* Competent working with web services (SOAP, REST, JSON, etc.)

* Some experience with Ruby on Rails is beneficial

* Some experience with JavaScript or ActionScript (Flex/Flash) is beneficial

* Some experience in and around Linux/Unix administration is desired

* Self starter who's anxious to start producing

A bachelor's degree in computer science, math or physics is required. A masters degree in computer science is preferred.

This position is based in our office in Seattle, WA.

If you are an accomplished software engineer with the experience and drive to succeed at blist, email your resume, as well as the source code for the programming challenge below, to software_engineer at blist dot com.

Programming challenge:

Without using any built in date or time functions, write a complete program that accepts two mandatory arguments. The first argument is a string of the format "[H]H:MM {AM|PM}" and the second argument is an integer. Assume the integer is the number of minutes to add to the string. The return value or output of the program should be a string of the same format as the first argument. For example AddMinutes("9:13 AM", 10) would return "9:23 AM". The exercise isn't meant to be too hard. We just want to see how you code. Feel free to do it procedurally or in an object oriented way, whichever you prefer. Use any language you want.