Aras Job Board / Hiring Practices

I’m a little late to this thread, but I figured I’d share a few thoughts. 😊

Is there a place to post Aras-related employment opportunities?

We don’t currently have a space dedicated to sharing open positions, but a community “job board” is on my backlog of future features I’d like to add to the community site. It’s not a high priority at the moment, but I can reevaluate if there’s significant interest. In the meantime, I’m fine with allowing job listings in the forums. 

I'd love to hear any interesting advice or stories from the community regarding

• Interview Questions
• Aras Team Structure
• Administrative Permissions
• Career Path Definition
• Post Hire Training
• Related Certifications 

I’ve hired and/or interviewed maybe 2 dozen candidates during my time at Aras. Those roles probably aren’t an exact match to a role at an Aras customer, but the process may be helpful or interesting. 

I’m typically looking for a candidate with excellent communication skills, an inherent curiosity or “entrepreneurial spirit”, and a good technical foundation - in that order. You can teach tech skills, but the other stuff is a lot harder.

On the technical side, we’ll ask some basic or intermediate Innovator questions if the candidate has Aras experience on their resume. (ex: write/fix a server method, explain versioning or fix/float behavior, etc.) We’ll also grill them on general tech topics like object oriented programming, interacting with the DOM, and SQL. 

Regarding the other skills, I like to give the candidate a small, contained assignment based on the actual work they’d be doing. I describe the task in the live interview and let them use any tools or resources they like - any tech stack, Google, AI tools like cursor, etc. The goal is to emulate the expected work environment so I can see how they work.

• Do they ask good questions and identify their assumptions? 
• Can they explain what they’re doing and why?
• Do they take advantage of the tools and resources available to them?
• Are they comfortable using AI in their coding workflow?
• Do they understand the code they generate with AI?

On the business side, it’s great if they have some experience or exposure to engineering/manufacturing/supply chain concepts, but it’s not required. By the time they’ve passed the initial HR screen, I do expect they’ve done enough research to give a high level explanation of what PLM is, identify who some of our customers are, and ask smart questions about the company or industry. 

Hi Bryan,

That´s a great question! I think this forum is an underrated place for job offers. Most openings are posted on LinkedIn or handled by headhunters.

In our case, we don´t necessarily look for "ready-to-go" Aras developers - simply because there aren´t many of them.

Skills you need

• Interest in PLM and a genuine liking for business software.
• You need to accept that not everything is as modern as a fancy mobile dating app. You´ll be working with mature business software that has evolved over many years, similar to SAP or other ERP/PLM systems. Some UI concepts are 20 years old - and you need to be okay with that.
• A love for dry, boring data - and for accuracy!
• Very important: the ability to understand code and a basic understanding of client/server applications.
• Experience with any kind of business software (ERP, PLM, etc.) is a plus.
• Experience in other fields is also a plus, such as manufacturing, development, QM, certification, legal topics, etc.

What you don’t need

• Fancy certificates. I don´t have many by myself. Most useful one right now is my first-aid course :)
• Prior Aras PLM skills. Even if someone has attended the configuration or development courses, they will still struggle to understand my very specific inventions 😉

Post-hire training

• We had the Aras Munich training center nearby, which was extremely helpful for general training. But most of the time we do training in-house. 

General remarks

• In our case, PLM is an ecosystem. You don´t just need to understand how Aras works - you need to understand how a company works.
• Classic ItemType building is the smallest part of the work.
• People must understand their audience. You work with people from many different backgrounds and departments. Solutions need to be easy and fast to use for them. Sometimes that means very simplified UIs, sometimes very complex technical solutions. -> You described it well in your job offer: "Act as a point of contact between end-users and system administrators "

Angela