Senior Rails Developer

anywhere  ‐ Remote
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Description

We are a distributed team of 5 building an incredible SaaS platform that helps companies make their people happy. We are in stealth, have done this before and are launching our beta soon - so this is an “all-in” role. If you’re looking for a cushy “9-5” job, please keep looking, but if you want to change the world and help make 1,000,000 people happier at work while being part of an amazing team and learning a lot along the way, please keep reading...

Who we are

We are currently in stealth mode, but right now we can tell you that:

  • Our mission is to make 1,000,000 people quantifiably happier at work
  • Our founder has previously built 3 successful companies and raised $100M
  • We are well funded and focused on an industry that’s ripe for disruption
  • We are looking for the best talent, regardless of where you are
  • We are a small team of 5 working ridiculously hard to realize our vision


  • We will of course tell you more if you apply for the position and if we feel you’re a good fit. Because we’re in stealth mode, we simply want to limit the amount of information we put out publicly right now. Thanks for understanding.

    What we’re building

    A beautiful, simple SaaS platform that helps fast-growing companies dramatically improve their culture and retain their best people as they scale.

    Who you are

    If these words describe you, then please keep reading:

  • Entrepreneurial
  • Results-driven
  • Reliable
  • Passionate
  • Committed
  • Resourceful
  • Life-long learner


  • You love building things and you’re a hardcore technologist - but you’re not arrogant or set in your ways. You know when it’s time to whiteboard ideas but you also know how to avoid analysis paralysis and build great software.

    You make technical decisions that take into account today’s considerations (ship early and often) but you also think a few years down the track. Sure, 100 people might use that feature today, but how will it perform when there are 1,000,000 users in 3 years? You know the delicate balance between over-engineering and under-planning.

    What you’ve done

    You’ve done a good amount of freelancing or remote work in the past, so you’re used to using tools like Slack and Google Hangouts to keep in constant communication with your team - whether they’re in the same city or on the other side of the world.

    You can work as part of a small team or on your own, but you’re an excellent written and verbal communicator. You probably have your own personal blog and/or regularly contribute to Medium or Quora to help others. You’re always learning and have a thirst for knowledge.

    Because you’ve worked at fast-growing startups before, you’re comfortable wearing multiple hats and switching between them regularly - sometimes hourly. Nothing is too much effort for you and you like getting in and rolling up your sleeves to solve a problem. If you need to learn a new technology or skill, no problem - you’ll get it done.

    You’ve worked on both small and large projects in the past and love building software. You’re also extremely proficient working with:

  • Ruby on Rails
  • Sass, Haml, CoffeeScript
  • AWS, Rackspace, Fastly
  • PostgreSQL
  • Solr


  • Ideally, you also have one or more of these skills:

  • Experience designing service-oriented architectures
  • Web operations or system administration experience
  • Strong front-end development skills


  • How you see the world

    In past roles, you’ve worked directly with customers to help understand their needs and translate a product spec into functional, production ready code. You’re mature enough to know that being a senior engineer is about much more than writing code and you think about architecture, scalability, performance, design implications and most importantly - the customer - with every decision you make.

    You care deeply about your legacy. Code quality is extremely important to you and as such you pay close attention to detail. Anything pushed into production by you is known to be polished and well thought out - and you take pride in that. You’re a craftsman (or woman) and see code as the tool you use to create software that people love.

    Finally, when asked what you’re best at, “learning” would top the list. You know that technologies come and go and understand that a continual commitment to learning is really the only thing that matters.

    In regards to experience, you:

  • Have 3-5 years of experience as a senior engineer with a good chunk of that time spent at fast-growing startups
  • Are used to working with RoR and have advanced experience building RESTful web services & APIs
  • Have strong experience working with multiple languages and can speak to the pros and cons of each
  • Are not a jerk and don’t have an ego - you respect people and go out of your way to be helpful
  • Have led teams in previous roles and are comfortable hiring and interviewing other engineers
  • Have passions or hobbies outside of work - you understand the need for balance


  • Where you are

    At home, at your local coffee shop or living life as a digital nomad. You are wherever you want to be and wherever makes you happy. We are a fully distributed team.

    Things you might do

  • Build and ship features independently, with fast release cycles (every week)
  • Fix bugs ranging from small logic changes to more complex issues involving complex SQL queries
  • Enhance and extend our SaaS architecture to support rapid growth in number of customers
  • Reply to support inquiries not because you feel you have to, but because you want to understand customers better
  • Work with other engineers and product designers to brainstorm and test new ideas
  • Help onboard new engineers and show them the ropes
  • Drive to continuously maintain high product quality and improve the process


  • Benefits and perks

  • Highly competitive salary
  • Stock options
  • Premium health coverage
  • Work from wherever makes you happy
  • Reimbursement for a desk in a co-working space if required
  • Choose the hours you work (4+ hours overlap with U.S. required)
  • Macbook Air
  • Unlimited books from Amazon
  • Unlimited Starbucks card
  • Membership at your favorite health club
  • 2 international trips per year for team events (2 weeks total travel)


  • How to apply?
    Email the following items if you’d like to apply:
  • A bit about yourself, including details on something you’ve built that you’re the most proud of
  • Links to your portfolio/Github/blog/twitter/etc (or attach 500+ LOC fro
  • Start date
    ASAP
    From
    PeopleSpark
    Published at
    19.05.2015
    Contact person:
    Freelancer Map
    Project ID:
    907020
    Contract type
    Freelance
    Workplace
    100 % remote
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