Egressive is focused on delivering top quality web applications built on the Drupal platform. Drupal is free and open source, and so anyone can learn how it works and adopt it as their preferred tool just like we have. That means that Drupal offers a level playing field for competition.

At Egressive, we aim to differentiate ourselves in the market by being more effective and experienced with Drupal and the surrounding open source tool set than other vendors. We've been working with the LAMP stack since 1998, and, having adopted Drupal as our primary web application platform in 2005, believe we have as strong track record in all the relevant technologies as anyone in New Zealand.

To consider someone for a Drupal development contracting role, we need to know that developer has the aptitude and motivation required to do the job and to whole-heartedly reflect the culture at Egressive.

Philosophical leanings:

• Commitment to the open source software approach as demonstrated by positive participation in open source communities - posting comments, active in strategic discussion, responding to other user queries, submitting patches, documentation, artwork, etc.
• Love learning constantly and take it upon yourself to stay current with the technology trends (and surrounding politics).
• Straight-up dealings - forthright communication, and an analytical mindset - not afraid to pipe up if something looks wrong - and not afraid to admit it if someone else has a better idea.
• Commitment to getting it done... properly.
• Platform agnostic is always better.
• Open standards compliant is always better.
• It's about solving problems, not about the money.

Technical characteristics:

• Strong familiarity with computing and programming theory - e.g. know what Object Oriented programming means, know what a database schema is, have an accurate mental image of XML.
• Serious experience with Linux or Mac OS X as your primary development environment (we don't encourage the use of MS Windows) - most of us use Ubuntu Linux as our development environment, and that's what our development server and production hosting environments run.
• Familiar with version control tools - we use Subversion.
• Familiar with PHP and PHP debugging aides (e.g. Xdebug and PEAR's logger).
• Know XHTML and CSS inside and out, and how to use debugging aides (Firefox and Firebug are a good place to start).
• Familiar with individual browser quirks. Disparaging MS IE6 and IE7 as sub-standard browsers is acceptable and tacitly encouraged until such time as MS produce a browser at least as compliant as Firefox, Konqueror, and Safari.

At Egressive, we don't think it's enough to pass some computing courses at the polytech or varsity. We're not fixated on qualifications. We're fixated on technology, and making it better. So should you be. Only that sort of passion will fuel the right sort of attitude and aptitude.