Realtime developer – Node.js and Go/Elixir

Ably realtime Published: August 10, 2017

Description

About Ably

Ably is a global realtime data delivery platform that powers low-latency communication between internet-enabled devices.  We solve the hardest parts of delivering the service reliably at scale so developers don’t have to.

At its core, we provide a transport for developers to deliver realtime applications, notifications, data syndication, and synchronization at Internet-scale.  Our product is offered as a multi-tenanted, globally distributed, elastic, and completely redundant platform-as-a-service.

The Ably platform is a second generation realtime platform, built from the ground up over more than three years to uniquely solve realtime problems of the future, at scale. These problems include being protocol agnostic, guaranteed message delivery and reliable ordering, massive fan-out or fan-in, and service continuity during network outages and data centre failures. We're delivering billions of messages to millions of devices for global companies like Yahoo, Computer Associates and Offerup. We're excited by the fact we're only getting started; we're growing quickly and on course to soon deliver trillions of messages.

We have a developer-first mindset in everything we do. We hide the complexity of our distributed interoperable platform and package it up for developers as a service with a simple API, great documentation and pro-active support.

We're looking to grow our team with great like-minded people.

Job description

You'll be working with a deeply technical engineering team who collectively bring a wealth of experience and broad technology skills. The calibre of the code we produce is what excites us each day and motivates us each.  If you enjoy solving hard problems that are mostly platform agnostic and theoretical in nature, then you'll love working at Ably.  Our team is made up of a strong remote contingent, however our base is in London and growing. We are strong believers in face-to-face communication where possible. Whilst this is a remote working role, being able to practically travel to London occasionally is highly preferable and working on a similar time zone is a must.

Day to day you can expect to be working on:

  • The "core" realtime platform using Node.js. You will also be required to work on the various services and routing layers of the platform which are built in Go and Elixir (we would expect you to be comfortable in either Go or Elixir, both would be a big win). As an aside, we use Ruby for all infrastructure automation and orchestration and occasionally write lower-level native code where necessary (such as native modules for Node). We're always revisiting the technologies we use and are always open to using new technologies where suitable.
  • Working within the realtime platform and solving distributed programming problems.
  • Collaborating with the team to design, discuss and implement new features and services.
  • Diagnosing and fixing bugs in our platform.
  • Adding suitable test coverage to new features as well as existing functionality, conducting load tests using our frameworks, and generally helping to address platform stability and regression prevention.
  • Be responsible for the complete lifecycle of your features and code i.e. pull request, reviews, testing, deploy to staging and sandbox environments, then into production environments with ownership of any issues that arise.  We are strong believers in all developers being involved in the system operations as well.
  • Contributing to open source projects that we support or use in our products.  All of our client libraries are open source as well and may require your support at times.
  • Helping customers solve problems they are experiencing that may help us find bugs in the platform.
  • Support the wider team in regards to documentation and customer support.
  • Suggestions for new features or improvements to our protocol and API specifications.

Benefits

  • Salary range: €45k to €65k.
  • Holidays: 25+ days excluding national holidays.
  • Benefit from a truly flexible working environment in which remote working and managing your own working time is the norm.
  • Work in an environment where code quality, technical challenges and delivery is what we all care about.
  • Skills development is intrinsic in the job. We're largely working on unsolved problems each day, and such, there is plenty of scope to widen your knowledge and skillset.
  • Work with genuinely nice people who care.

Requirements

  • Experience: A minimum of a three years of professional experience in Node.js. Go and/or Elixir experience is very beneficial. You must have experience using both statically and dynamically typed languages, ideally in at least one other language. Any exposure to realtime and distributed systems is a real advantage. An understanding of Ruby is beneficial in regards to infrastructure automation and tooling, but not necessary.
  • Pragmatic: A problem solver excited by the prospect of working autonomously solve problems and bring solutions to the team.
  • Fast Learner: We’re looking for software engineers who thrive on applying their knowledge, learning new technologies.  Our stack is diverse, and we expect it to continue to grow.
  • Testing: Experience using testing frameworks and adoption of test driven development where applicable.
  • Infrastructure: Experience with infrastructure and distributed systems is beneficial.
  • Communication: We use tools such as Slack throughout the day to communicate, however we believe in voice conversations to discuss and solve problems. You must be proficient in spoken and written English, be eager to collaborate with the engineering team and constructively welcome code reviews.
  • Customers: Comfortable talking to customers and assisting them with their technical issues and integration.
  • Open source: We prefer developers who have contributed back to the open source community, even if those contributions are small.

Please apply for this role on our Jobs Website

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