NOW HIRING: Internal Tooling Backend Engineer

Company: Balena
Website: https://www.balena.io
Headquarters: Global


Balena provides a software platform that helps developers build, deploy and manage code on connected devices. We brought Docker to embedded GNU/Linux devices in 2013 and have been building our IoT toolkit ever since.

Our technology is open, standards-based, and proven in production across a wide range of scenarios from drones, 3D printers, point-of-sale devices, tidal turbines, skyscrapers and more. Our investors include DFJ, Aspect Ventures, GE, and Ericsson.

Balena is a highly distributed, remote-friendly company. We rely on clear communication and the rule of "assume positive intent" to help us work together across time zones, cultures, and first languages. As an organization, we have little hierarchy, and organize as needed to build complex features and solve big problems. Our base of operations is nominally London, though really we are living all over the world: from Barcelona to Bulgaria, Argentina to Vietnam, and many more.


ON BEING A INTERNAL TOOLING BACKEND ENGINEER AT BALENA

Balena is developing Jellyfish, an ambitious social knowledge database that the team uses to collaborate, without being blocked by departmental or hierarchal divisions. Jellyfish gathers all information company wide and makes it a platform to implement processes that enhance the team's productivity and understanding. Think of it as a cross between Slack and Excel!

The improved problem space visibility and communication flow that the platform provides to the team is then leveraged to help build and improve both internal and customer facing products. Multiple teams across the company are already relying on the Jellyfish platform for their daily tasks.


Jellyfish adopts a revolutionary and cutting edge architecture:

• The external interface is based on JSON Schema and JSON Patch
• Actions on the system are asynchronous by default
• The UI is auto-generated based on the data
• It can seamlessly integrate with external services such as GitHub and Discourse
• The Jellyfish team consists of a small group of tight-knit engineers who take pride on moving hyper fast without sacrificing quality by investing on automation, testing, and great engineering practices.

We don't require engineers to be already familiar with the technologies we use. We are happy to invest in people that showcase a strong understanding of the challenges of building secure distributed systems.


RESPONSIBILITIES

• Actively invest back in our own technology, libraries, and frameworks
• Be highly motivated to produce great code
• Understand security best practices and strive to apply them in your work
• Design, architect, and own the execution of your projects
• Ensure the architecture of our distributed system remains cohesive
• Collaborate, brainstorm, and coordinate work with other teammates
• Understand the high-level goals, and thus know how to prioritize your work
• Challenge orthodoxy when that will help the product evolve
• Work efficiently with a certain amount of ambiguity in the tasks you're executing

REQUIREMENTS

Need to have:

• Desire to make yourself and others more effective. You'd be bothered by an inefficient process
• Desire to make yourself and others more effective. You'd be bothered by an inefficient process
• Good understanding of software engineering practices and how to apply them
• Excellent written communication skills, and fluency in English
• Self-discipline to take on a project and push it to completion without too much management. You also know when to ask for help
• Highly organized, able to handle many threads at once, and keep things moving
• Strong problem-solving abilities. You know how to split a complex problem into incremental pieces
• Strong understanding of HTTP
• Experience working on distributed systems

Nice to have:

• A sample of your work (URL or attached sample)
• Contributions to OSS projects (please include a URL)
• Having worked remotely before
• Experience with balena as a user
• Experience with embedded GNU/Linux, anything ranging from personal projects with a Raspberry Pi to commercial or industrial scenarios with custom devices
• Experience with PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes, and Node.js
• Experience with JSON Schema
• Experience with NoSQL or graph databases
• Make sure to let us know if any of these items apply to you!

ABOUT WORKING AT BALENA

We come from 15+ countries, and we embrace a remote culture with flexible hours. To us, this means being highly productive while still maintaining a healthy work-life balance. You need to be able to work remotely, and have a dependable internet access available so you can join video calls.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. We value knowledge and initiative more than educational and personal backgrounds, age, or location. We maintain a work environment in which team members are treated with respect at all times and in which thoughts and ideas can be shared openly.

We communicate proposals, discuss with others in the team and accept feedback if it makes the result better. We value the ability to learn, which is more important to us than knowledge of specific technologies. We know that learning fast means being outside our comfort zone, which is OK -- we'd rather learn than let our assumptions get in our way.


BENEFITS

• Work with an extremely talented, diverse team
• Equipment of your choice
• Remote-friendly
• Flexible working hours
• Generous vacation policy
• Annual company gathering in an international location - this year, Barcelona in October
• We send you hardware for side projects!

TO APPLY

We're delighted to hear about you! Send us your CV, with a focus on what you can bring to the team. Please include in your cover letter a paragraph about something you worked on that you found technically appealing or exciting.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY


Source: Remote OK, Stack Overflow, Balena