We're hiring kick-butt web developers! We'll use the rest of this space to answer some of the common questions we get about working as a developer here.
What do web developers at Marvel do?
We work on all aspects of our online presence, from high-traffic websites like Marvel.com and Marvelkids.com to mobile apps to under-the-hood infrastructure like APIs and content management systems. We solve problems like:
- scaling our website to quickly respond to ever-growing traffic
- creating new ways for users to browse and explore 70 years-worth of content
- making next-generation comics readers and innovative ways of visualizing our content
What skills are you looking for?
First and foremost we're looking for people who love to innovative, take ownership of the projects they work on, and find creative solutions to complex problems.
We use a wide variety of technologies to power our online presence, but the key ones are JavaScript, HTML and CSS (including HTML 5 and CSS 3), PHP, MySQL and a variety of web services. Most developers have some specialty (like front-end coding) but we also expect that everyone on the team wants to jump in and learn all parts of the technology stack.
We are also highly invested in hiring people who are not jerks.
What's your hiring process?
We try to strike a balance between being very thorough and respecting your time as a candidate.
If your resume looks promising, we'll ask for a code sample and have a phone conversation. If we move forward after that, you'll be asked in for one or two in-person interviews (or videoconferences if you're not in the New York area) where you'll meet several people on the web technology and product team. We usually ask candidates we're really interested in to do coding exercises that use our technologies.
(Note: other departments at Marvel have their own processes. This is just how the web dev team does it.)
What types of questions do you ask in interviews?
We focus on your technical knowledge, understanding and ability to solve problems. We avoid asking questions which test arcane programming trivia (like "Name the 3rd element in the array returned by the php getimagesize function") or highly abstract questions. Instead we try to gauge your understanding of how the internet and web applications work and give you opportunities to give us examples of how you'd tackle real-world problems we encounter.
Also, knowing the differences between "GET" and "POST" never hurts. Just saying.
Do I have to be a comic fan to work as a web developer at Marvel?
We have hired people who have never read a comic, and we've brought on folks who have had to rent extra storage for their longboxes.
Do you have an obscure puzzle that I can answer to prove that I can solve problems?
Send your resume to:
(
(the marvel.com ID of the movie Marvel's The Avengers*the marvel.com ID of the movie Howard the Duck) +
((the issue number of the last issue published in the 1963 to 2011 series of Uncanny X-Men + the number of bits which JavaScript uses to represent a number) *
(the ASCII character with a hex value of
((the year of publication of Marvel Comics #1) - 1900)
))
) @ marvel.com
- pete
[Edited By Moderator]
