Magento Developer - ongoing work building new models and behaviour

Univex is a small company that does big things, based in Melbourne, Australia. We have been in business for close to 40 years and have a small and very loyal customer base. We are on a mission to help take our customers’ businesses to the next level through technology. Our top values are Trustworthiness, Relationships, and Reliability. We hope you share similar values and ethics. Our flagship product is an integrated POS, backoffice, and e-commerce suite of software used by retailers and wholesalers in Australia and New Zealand. For e-commerce we use Magento and develop custom extensions, models, and REST interfaces to hook it into our retail system. Over the past few months we have been moving our customers from our own proprietary e-commerce platform to Magento CE 1.9. We have 3 sites up with another 4 to build as soon as possible. The work is ongoing: our customers are on contract with us to build, maintain, and continually deliver value through the software we create for them. We want to provide more than just an e-commerce shop front. We are adding custom functionality to help our customers achieve more through their web presence. We also have some big and crazy plans for Magento based products later this year, once these new sites are deployed and functioning smoothly. Unfortunately our lead Magento programmer has fallen ill and can’t continue with his role. So we are looking for your help make this overall program a success! We still have more custom functionality to do, some bugs to fix, and to find workarounds for Magento’s quirks. You will be working alongside two part-time Magento programmers in Melbourne, another part-timer in the Philippines, and three customer service / system administrators in Melbourne. You will often work independently on jobs and call upon the others for advice, to throw around ideas, and to test each other’s work. We are seeking a full-time, or near-full time (i.e. 30-45 hours per week) Magento developer. Somebody who isn’t afraid to get under the hood and develop custom extensions and override the core code. This is NOT a job for a VA, or somebody who only knows Magento administration. You will need to know how to confidently code in Magento’s models and build new ones. We need somebody who can help take our business to the next level, and be rewarded with stable employment and some fantastic opportunities to further your career. In the first week or two we might give you some fully paid trial work so that you can demonstrate your skills to us, and you learn more about how we operate. We are interested in forming long term partnerships with the right person. We are located in Melbourne, Australia, and we want some decent overlap of daylight hours for chatting and Skype conversations. You need to have stable internet and power, and be willing work during the day (your timezone, no need to get up crazy early for us). This is not a job for night-owls or those with irregular working habits. Communication and reliability is what our customers expect from us, and we expect the same from you. You will be paid weekly and I’m not afraid to invest in your talent if you have the right attitude and skills to match. We would be delighted to hear from you and explore how we might work together!