About Citi:
Citigroup’s Global Consumer Group serves consumers through retail banking, cards, and consumer finance, providing a full range of innovative and comprehensive products and services. Our businesses also offer industry-leading advanced technology, a strong worldwide presence, and a powerful global franchise.

Job Description:
Strategic and tactical web application development initiatives for the consumer lending business. Capable of translating requirements and design artifacts from multiple sources into comprehensive web application solutions. Will be responsible for effort estimations, meeting development deadlines and providing development oversight and leadership to development resources in an onshore/offshore development model. Must possess a high level of communication skills as you will be expected to interact with both business and technical resources. This individual will report into the Real Estate Development Management team and act as an individual contributor in the development delivery process.

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to level zero, level one and level two estimates
• Develop a thorough understanding of business requirements developed by a Business Analyst
• Provide status on the progress of the development effort to development management
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to the offshore development team
• Resolution of defects during the QA and UAT testing process
• Maintain documentation standards and versioning control
• Adherence to security and compliance standards
• Manage individual contribution or group effort to tight deadlines
• Post-deployment support

Educational/Experience Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree is preferred and a minimum of 3 years experience working on software development of Internet/Intranet applications. Financial services industry experience and five years experience is preferred.

Skills:

• Experience performing object oriented development
• Java tools including WSAD, RAD, JBuilder, Eclipse, NetBeans preferred
• Experience in all phases of traditional SDLC
• UML design tools including Rational Rose/Enterprise Architect preferred
• Experience managing onshore/offshore applications development services is a plus
• Strong problem solving and analytical capabilities
• Must be able to adapt to a rapidly changing environment
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, deadline-driving environment

If you’re interested, please contact Todd Rimer with Citi at (513) 979-9328 or by e-mail at todd.d.rimer at citi dot com.

At the last St. Louis Spring meeting on Thursday, April 24th, those present discussed the upcoming meeting night problems. The current location is in Fenton at the Maryville University Fenton campus. During the summer months (May through September), the Maryville location is open only on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

We discussed the possibility of moving to another location as well as simply changing nights and the majority of those present voted to simply change nights. Therefore, starting in May we will move the meeting from the fourth Thursday of each month to the fourth Wednesday of each month. The meeting location and meeting time remains unchanged.

This falls under the category of WOW! It was announced today that SpringSource has agreed to be acquired by Microsoft.

Apparently, Microsoft has BIG plans for Spring (the .NET version) and much attention in the near future will be paid towards building up the .NET version of the framework.

You can read more about this announcement here.

What does everyone think about this? How will this effect our group?

[Revised]
OK, I’ve been had too. This must be an April Fools joke posted on InfoQ. Go ahead and pile on!

I was speaking with a representative of Maryville University this evening after the meeting ended and was told that the summer schedule begins in early May. The bad news is that the summer schedule does NOT include classes on Thursdays, which is our normal meeting night. Throughout the summer (May through August), our normal meeting location will be open only on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

We have three choices I can think of:

1. Move the meeting to a Tuesday or Wednesday evening
2. Move the meeting location elsewhere and retain our normal meeting dates
3. Cancel meetings during the summer months

Though the meeting location may not be the most convenient for all, I was pleased with the facilities. There is adequate seating and parking and we have access to an overhead projector and the Internet. I thought the room was great for both presenting and holding discussions.

Secondly, I’d rather not cancel meetings as we are just getting started. I’m afraid canceling at this point will hurt whatever momentum we are able to build.

What does everyone think about this? Please either post comments or send me an e-mail to let me know. We can discuss at the April meeting.

The St. Louis Spring Users Group held its inaugural meeting tonight. There were approximately 10-12 people in attendance. We discussed all sorts of things including upcoming topics, ideas for the group and even endured a presentation by Jeff Roberts.

There were several large companies in St. Louis represented and lots of discussion about all things Spring. Those in attendance ranged from novice to expert.

The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 6:00 PM. If you missed the first meeting, please plan to attend the next one!

Next month, Kent Miller is going to present on Testing in Spring. Detailed information regarding his presentation will be posted soon.

The inaugural meeting of the St. Louis Spring Users group has been scheduled. The meeting is being held on Thursday, March 27th at 6:00 PM.

The primary purpose of the initial meeting is for everyone to get together to become acquainted and discuss Spring and the direction for our users group.

A brief presentation has been scheduled. Jeff Roberts is presenting a very basic introduction to the concept of Inversion of Control, a concept that is core to the entire Spring Framework and is relevant to both the Java and .NET versions.

Please plan to attend this event and help to kickoff our group with a bang. Further details about the meeting can be found by consulting the meetings page. For additional details regarding our meeting location, please consult the meeting location page.

If you plan to attend, please R.S.V.P. to Jeff Roberts. We hope to see you there.

Spring St. Louis has a home. Thanks to Alliance Systems & Programming, we have a nice facility at which to hold our meetings. They have kindly agreed to pay the monthly cost to rent a room at the Maryville University Fenton Campus.

This facility is conveniently located in Fenton, Missouri across Highway 44 from the Chrysler Fenton plant. The room we’ll be using can easily hold at least 20 and comes equipped with an Internet connection and an overhead projector for the presenter to use. Should we outgrow this room, the Fenton campus has larger rooms that we can move into without having to completely change our location.

Please see the location page for details about our meeting location including directions and the regular meeting date and time.

The St. Louis Spring Users Group has been formed by Jeff Roberts. I am in the process of organizing and planning the first meeting. If you are interested in attending meetings, speaking or participating in any way, please contact me.

You can reach me by e-mail at jeff.roberts@stlspring.org or by phone at (314) 960-6121.

I’m in the planning stages and am planning on holding regular monthly meetings. No meetings have yet been scheduled, but I am hoping to hold the inaugural meeting in February or March, 2008. I’m currently considering either the third Tuesday or Thursday of every month at 6:00 PM until 7:30 PM or 8:00 PM.

Please help spread the word. I’ll be posting updates to the site as we get closer to our meeting.

Contact me if you are interested in participating (speaking, presenting, attending) in the group. I look forward to hearing from everyone!