Remote job
Senior Developer Tech Lead

Closing date: Open until filled

Do you love modern web technologies? Are you a team player who likes solving difficult problems together? Do you want to join one of the UK’s most exciting tech start-ups and play a key role in developing an ambitious product with a global impact?

Flourish is empowering the world to visualize and tell stories with data. It enables anyone to create beautiful graphics, presentations and interactive stories without coding. Since our launch in 2018, more than 500,000 registered users have produced more than 5 million graphics, which have racked up more than ten billion views.

Our customers include leading newsrooms (such as BBC and FT), major corporates (such as Goldman Sachs and Moody’s), NGOs (Amnesty, Rockefeller) plus universities all over the world.

We’re looking for a senior developer to join our team, reporting to the head of software development.

The role

You’ll be the technical lead in one of our small development teams, overseeing the creation of significant new features on the Flourish platform. Your team will:

• Develop new features for Flourish, using modern web technologies

• Maintain standards for web performance, security and accessibility

• Build automated tests and improve the observability of the codebase

• Pair-program and review code

• Help improve the way we work and the tools we use

This is a thoroughly hands-on development role: most of your time will be spent working with code. But you will also mentor and manage other developers and work closely with the product team.

This role is focused on the Flourish back-end platform rather than the visualization templates, which are developed separately.

About you

You are an experienced developer who enjoys working collaboratively and loves to learn new things. You care deeply about the quality of your work and are thoughtful about how to improve both what you’re doing and how the team works together. You’re happy to adopt existing conventions of the code base.

Importantly, you’re excited by Flourish and the opportunity to make it better. You’re a friendly colleague and you work well in a close-knit team.

Must-have skills

• A deep understanding of the web platform

• At least five years experience as a full-stack developer

• Strong JavaScript and Node.js skills

• Competence with command-line Linux and shell scripting

• Good SQL skills

• Be comfortable using Git for version control, and understand why clear history matters

• Familiarity with working practices such as test-driven development, continuous integration and continuous delivery

• Experience of agile methodologies

• Awareness of security best practices for web applications

Nice-to-have skills

• AWS (S3, EC2, IAM, etc)

• PostgreSQL

• Infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Puppet

Person attributes

• An enthusiasm for learning and teaching

• A systematic approach to solving problems

• A love of the web and an interest in performance

• The ability to give feedback kindly and receive feedback

About us

• Our tech stack: Some of the technologies we use include Node.js, Express; Postgres, Redis; Handlebars, Sass; AWS; Cypress; GitHub, CircleCI, Sentry. We don’t expect you to have worked with all of these, but any you have are a plus.

• Our company: Flourish is a small team combining decades of collective experience in development, data, design, visualization and journalism/publishing. Read more about the team.

• Our culture: We’re a friendly and supportive group that values kindness, honesty and fun. We’re open and try new things with enthusiasm. And we’re high-momentum, focused on delivering magical products that our users love. We socialise as a team at least once a month.

• Our interview process: We make our hiring process fast and straightforward. Typically there is brief initial call and online screening test, followed by an interview designed to be rigorous but friendly and collaborative. We’ll ask you to do some pair-programming with us, to get a sense for how you communicate, but we don’t do stressful whiteboard coding.

• Our location: We are largely a UK-based team, with a few exceptions. We used to be based in a fun office in Clerkenwell in central London. This was closed at the start of the COVID crisis, and we intend to get a new office in London in 2021, most likely in the Shoreditch area, but we do support remote working.

Benefits

• Salary from £60–80k depending on skill and experience

• Remote working is welcome (the majority of our development team is remote), though after lockdown lifts, it would be a plus if you could be at our London office every few weeks for sprint planning/retros and socials

• ‘20% time’ for developers on Fridays - you can choose what to work on, as long as it’s relevant to the company’s mission

• Share options in a rapidly growing company

• Flexible hours, and respect for work/life balance (not “startup hours”)

• Lots of potential for career progression

• 30 days’ annual holiday

To apply

Send a CV, and a covering letter explaining why you’re interested in this role and how you meet the description above, to [email protected] Please use the subject line “Software Engineer”. Got questions about the job? Feel free to email us for a chat.

We’re committed to equality and diversity in the tech industry, so we’ll be especially happy to see applications from under-represented backgrounds.

Sorry, but we won’t be able to sponsor visas for this role: please do not apply if you do not already have the right to work in the UK. We are not accepting applications from recruitment agencies for this role.

Not right for you?

Please spread the word instead! And join our mailing list to stay posted about Flourish.