ROR Developer

Job Description

The Opportunity

The Springboard engineering team is looking for software engineers with strong backend & frontend technical expertise. In this role, you would be responsible for building exciting features aimed at improving our student experience and expanding our student base, using the latest technologies like GenAI, as relevant. You would also contribute to making our platform more robust, flexible and scalable. This is a great opportunity to create a meaningful impact as well as grow in your career.

We are looking for engineers with different levels of experience and expertise. Depending on your proficiency levels, you will join our team as a Software Engineer II, Senior Software Engineer or Lead Software Engineer.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop features for the Springboard platform, which enriches the learning experience of thousands through human guided learning at scale
• Own quality and reliability of the product by getting hands on with code and design reviews, debugging complex issues and so on
• Contribute to the platform architecture through redesign of complex features based on evolving business needs
• Influence and establish best engineering practices through solid design decisions, processes and tools
• Provide technical mentoring to team members

You

• You have experience with web application development, on both, backend and frontend.
• You have a solid understanding of software design principles and best practices.
• You have hands-on experience in,
• Coding and debugging complex systems, with frontend integration.
• Code review, responsible for production deployments.
• Building scalable and fault-tolerant applications.
• Re-architecting / re-designing complex systems / features (i.e. managing technical debt).
• Defining and following best practices for frontend and backend systems.
• You have excellent problem solving skills and are comfortable handling ambiguity.
• You are able to analyze various alternatives and reach optimal decisions. 
• You are willing to challenge the status quo, express your opinion and drive change.
• You are able to plan reasonably complex pieces of work and can handle changing priorities, unknowns and challenges with support. You want to contribute to the platform roadmap, aligning with the organization priorities and goals.
• You enjoy mentoring others and helping them solve challenging problems.
• You have excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present complex technical information in a clear and concise manner. You are able to communicate with various stakeholders to understand their requirements.
• You are a proponent of quality - building best practices, introducing new processes and improvements to make the team more efficient.

Non-negotiables

Must have

• Expertise in Backend development (Python & Django experience preferred)
• Expertise in Frontend development (AngularJS / ReactJS / VueJS experience preferred)
• Experience working with SQL databases
• Experience building multiple significant features for web applications

Good to have

• Experience with Google Cloud Platform (or any cloud platform)
• Experience working with any Learning Management System (LMS), such as Canvas
• Experience working with GenAI ecosystem, including usage of AI tools such as code completion
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and applications deployed on Kubernetes
• Experience with refactoring (redesigning complex systems / features, breaking monolith into services)
• Experience working with NoSQL databases
• Experience with Web performance optimization, SEO, Gatsby and FE Analytics
• Delivery skills, specifically planning open ended projects
• Mentoring skills

Expectations

• Able to work with open ended problems and come up with efficient solutions
• Able to communicate effectively with business stakeholders to clarify requirements for small to medium tasks and own end to end delivery
• Able to communicate estimations, plan deviations and blockers in an efficient and timely manner to all project stakeholders

Roles and Responsibilities

• Utilize your professional software development experience to write clean, maintainable, and efficient code in Ruby on Rails
• Ensure the code you write is defect-free and meets our product requirements
• Demonstrate strong debugging skills to identify and resolve issues promptly
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design, develop, and implement new features and enhancements
• Contribute to the planning and execution of CI/CD pipelines using tools like GitHub Actions
• Operate with minimal technical guidance, demonstrating your ability to take ownership of projects and deliver results

Requirement

• 10+ years of professional software development experience with Ruby on Rails
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent work experience)
• Deep understanding of software development best practices, design patterns and architecture of any Rails application Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Git, and GitHub
• Exceptional problem-solving and debugging skills
• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment
• Strong communication skills
• Self-motivated and able to work independently with minimal supervision
• Immediate joiners are preferred

Founding Engineer:

As a Founding Engineer, you'll be responsible for designing, building, and launching our product to customers. Specifically,

• Since our team is lean and we plan to keep it that way - you’ll be one of the first five engineers in leading the zero-to-one journey of a product our customers are hungry for
• Lead technical design and implementation of the frontend and backend of the product with coaching and mentorship from world-class technical architects
• Have knowledge of (or learn) how to work with Shopify’s CLI
• Iterate quickly to create delightful user experiences, working closely with customers/ design partners
• Help us hire a world-class engineering team in the months ahead
• Our team is currently fully remote (with offices to be opened in Bangalore and Mumbai over next few months) and cross-border across San Francisco, Boston, and India - help us cultivate a remote-first, inclusive, diverse, and friendly culture
• Work directly with the founders with an ownership mindset

Skills and Experience:

• Prior experience working with backend tech stacks (e.g. Spring Boot, Ruby on Rails, Django, Laravel)
• Experience with service service-oriented architecture, writing REST APIs, unit testing, and architectural design
• Understanding of modern web stacks and architecture (HTTP, REST, GraphQL, WebSockets)
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases and other technologies (e.g. Mysql, Redis, Kafka)
• Prior experience working with frontend tech stacks (e.g. React, Angular, Vue.js)
• Prior experience working with frontend UI frameworks (e.g. Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS)

I'm the founder of Version One Labs (look me up on LinkedIn) and I want you to work with me on an interesting new idea!

I was previously Director of Engineering at Crunchbase, led product and engineering at Oncue (venture-funded B2B SaaS) and have built products at multiple bay area startups. I run a product development studio, Version One Labs, that works with startups here in California. The website is a bit out of date but I’m currently working with a few exciting startups to help them with their product dev efforts.

This role is for a different mission though. I am currently in the early stages of building our first internal product and am looking for 2-3 scrappy, driven, and sharp developers who are interested in working on exciting ideas and build products from the ground up. 

You will learn a lot in the process.  If you have startup dreams of your own and are interested in some day doing your own thing, I strongly believe this experience + the wealth of knowledge I can share with you could be invaluable for you.

Here's what I'm looking for:

- you must be highly proficient with React (typescript, redux etc etc) or Rails (strong database design, clean code, and API building skills). I will check for your fluency with both.

- you enjoy the process of building something from scratch and don't require a ton of hand holding, i.e., you are self-driven

- you like the autonomy and freedom of working on early stage stuff and can manage your own time (I don't boss around and like working with people who I don't have to manage too much)

- you have utmost integrity (tell me what you don't know and deliver what you say you will, when you say you will)

- you are willing and open to new ideas and are a fast learner

If this is appealing to you, please apply. I respond quickly.

We're looking for a Full Stack developer who will take a key role on our team. Our Full Stack developer must have knowledge in all stages of software development.

Requirements:

• Design overall architecture of the web application.
• Maintain quality and ensure responsiveness of applications.
• Collaborate with the rest of the engineering team to design and launch new features.
• Maintain code integrity and organisation.
• Experience working with graphic designers and converting designs to visual elements.
• Understanding and implementation of security and data protection.
• Highly experienced with back-end programming with NodeJS, you can easily design and integrate the REST APIs with front end.
• Well versed with JavaScript (frameworks such as ReactJS).
• Development experience for both mobile and desktop.
• Experience with cloud message APIs and usage of push notifications.
• Knowledge of code versioning tools such as Git.
• Knowledge about Firebase & GoLang is an added advantage.