Node/JS Engineer (m/f/x).

We hire people, not positions.

9Y

We're a software agency originally from Austria with clients across US, UK and Europe like RedBull, OMV and Knotel. We've since grown to be a distributed remote-first team with people all over the place, most of whom are in Croatia.

We're an engineer-led company, where the founders are former software engineers who built the kind of company in which they themselves wanted to work at. Our founders are software engineers who teach advanced software design patterns at university, and are hardcore OSS contributors.

9Y is a company with a flat structure, well defined processes, direct communication, no unnecessary meetings, freedom to work from wherever, freedom to work whenever, a super-liberal personal budget, special leave, great team building (this year we're renting yachts and going sailing in the Adriatic).

We're huge believers in transparency, which is why we've open sourced our internal Playbook.

About the project

We're scaling up our team specifically for a project with one of our US clients who is a venture funded startup, led by a very experienced team (ex-unicorn founders with exits). They are trying to unfuck the energy grid infrastructure in the US by building a developer-centric-platform. Think Plaid (the fintech company), except for energy infrasturcure.

There is a bunch of work to be done on data models and architecture across device types (Batteries, Thermostats, and Electric Vehicles). We have one of each of these types from a given manufacturer. Now we are looking to take those core models and build out support for more manufacturers. This involves:

• Developing a new service which can serve as the adapter layer between us and a manufacturer through which all communication with a manufacturer will flow
• Establishing the connection between us and the manufacturer via OAuth (or whatever mechanism they support)
• Mapping the manufacturer specific schema to our standard schema for each device type
• We have a standardized command schema for performing events on devices so part of this work would also be mapping our schema to the device manufacturer APIs
• Depending on the device manufacturer API, establishing an endpoint on our side to receive updates via webhook or setting up a polling job to reach out regularly to receive the most recent device information data

Our tech stack for the backend consists of the following:

• Node.js (TypeScript) microservices

• Postgres db's

• Redis for caching

• Kafka as our primary event source

The platform is primarily event-driven with many messages passing between services any time a new connection is created or destroyed, we get a state update from a device via push or polling, and more

You'll work alongside our senior Engineers, Designers and PMs in cross-functional teams. You will grow as a developer and tech leader within the company through your work and collaboration with our CTO and COO on mostly Node.js projects. You'll have a lot of autonomy and influence on the technical direction of the project and company.

Who are we looking for

• You're an independent thinker, who does not need handholding and likes it when people get out of your way so that you can get things done.

• You have the courage to push back against superiors when they make mistakes (hint: they do, more often than they'd like).

• You're able to have productive arguments with colleagues, and are able to balance fighting hard for your own points on their merit, while being able to recognise and concede when someone else's idea may be more suited for the particular situation at hand.

• A love for being challenged, and an understanding that this is one of the best ways to grow.

• Appreciation that sometimes a technically inferior solution is the overall better decision (e.g. due to economics or time-to-market). This should be hard for you to accept, but you should be able to do this on occasion.

• Appreciation for working in a team that prefers async communication as opposed to interrupt-driven meeting-based communication. You don't like sitting in meetings.

• You value a merit-driven work culture, where work speaks for itself.

Job requirements

• Help shape our development culture and best practices

• Develop and maintain Node.js applications

• Own the development process and push back when needed against PM/Leads to ensure that projects are delivered to a high level of quality without the need for heroics

• Mentor other developers

• Develop reusable libraries that may be be open sourced (for which you will be credited as the author)

• Participate in all project phases, from requirements analysis through implementation to customer support regarding technical issues

• Ensure you and your colleagues ship clean code and follow good development practices

• Help identify and scope out future projects, then manage those projects from the technical side, contributing to the codebase as needed in an IC capacity or as a tech lead depending on project needs

The superiors for this position

• CTO

• COO

Minimal level of education

Not important (our CTO dropped out of university to co-found 9Y)

Certificates

Not important

Minimal work experience

5 years

Salary range

Employment contract: 3k-5.5k EUR/mo gross

(B2B contracts also possible: 3k - 6.5k EUR/mo + VAT)

Perks

• Flexible working hours (we recognise that 9-5 may not be your most productive time, some of us also have kids and families)

• Special Leave

• Personal Budget

• Lunch programme

• Remote First

The hiring process

It's open sourced here (including what we look for and how we make our decision).

Interested? Drop us a line with your CV at jobs@9y.co