Others might have scratched the surface on this, but based on my network's experience and my own, don't even try the startup route, it's not worth it. Outside the US, you'll either get
a) no sponsorship
b) non-competitive salaries
c) mentor roles
and that's being on the real top of your field.
I'd go for a bigger company which has
a) the resources
b) the legal expertise
c) the demand
Given you do Python, Dropbox comes to mind, but you can always Google or stackshare.io for targets.
Jeeze, bad things happen (or could) to the greatest services ;) I'm late to the discussion, didn't have time to lurk around, nevertheless what I can agree the most is about gem signing. A gem is a package of software, and every single package distributor makes the author sign their work (think linux packages, being a Debian/Ubuntu developer I can tell you that if you don't get your package signed, it won't get uploaded, period, your key in some cases (Debian) needs to be verified in person to build a circle of trust. I think that besides the overhead (initially, I'm sure people will contribute scripts or integrate this so that the developer won't notice) this is really a needed step you guys should take.
@cheald: The best answer so far, but sorry if I still find it a little incomplete as this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2569501/what-ruby-and-rai....
See, every developer should be able to read someone else's code, have a big picture of the stack he's using and sustainable knowledge of every bit of it, be familiar with philosophical issues, and ways of doing, and community practices (such as testing or BDD), handle the deployment and scalability of their own production system, and use a version control system. I don't think handling all that plus serious communication and somewhat mentoring skills would get you a senior dev. That's why I'm asking for more. Thanks.
IMHO that definition is flawed. For lots of people senior != time on something. That's what usually recruiters have to back on because they don't have any other measures. I'm asking from a programmer standpoint. I remember dhh's joke on some position in NY (NYT or Library, can't recall) position requiring 8 years of Rails experience ;)
Given you do Python, Dropbox comes to mind, but you can always Google or stackshare.io for targets.
Good luck.