Senior Back-end Developer (Rails) at Calibre

Your role

4   day work week
   remote in 60+ countries
   salary range: A$121,000 - A$143,000

Here s how we work together and what you can expect from this role:

The role is permanent and full time (four days a week). You must be eligible to work in one of the 60+ countries supported by Remote and have at least 2 hours of overlap with Melbourne, Australia to apply for this role. We don t offer relocation at this time.

We are a small company which means each person we hire becomes a lead of their area of expertise. We will expect you to contribute high-quality code, establish processes and make architecture decisions to improve the back-end at Calibre.

You ll be working on a diverse set of tasks. While we focus on bigger initiatives, no two days are the same. You might be developing new functionality to support a growing application, optimising SQL or GraphQL queries, finding and fixing bugs or updating technical documentation.

We rely on resilient and modern technologies. You ll be working in an environment including Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, RSpec, GraphQL, JavaScript, Terraform, Heroku, AWS (EC2, SQS and Lambda) and GitHub Actions.

We use tools that help us do our best work. You ll collaborate primarily via Linear, Slack, GitHub and Notion.

We value deep work and written communication, which is why we re light on meetings. Apart from weekly team sync and fortnightly 1:1, you can focus on what you do best.

Everyone at Calibre talks to our customers. You will help with support conversations, and if you ve never done this before, we will coach you in how we approach delivering the best customer experience.

The salary range for this role is between A$121,000 and A$143,000 (including superannuation for Australian employees).

Your day-to-day tasks might look like this:

Communication: we might be in a similar timezone, but we often work asynchronously. Clear, strong communication and collaboration is something that comes naturally to you.

Building and maintaining application functionality: you ll be primarily working on the Calibre application and its supporting infrastructure. Some of our upcoming projects include migrating the primary metric store from PostgreSQL to Clickhouse and updating the GraphQL API to support new performance metric dashboard functionality and using the Github API to improve our Pull Request Reviews integration.

Housekeeping: keeping our codebase in tip-top shape is as important as building new features. You ll ensure our dependencies are up-to-date, work on web performance improvements, refactor old code and address customer issues raised in our support channels.

How Calibre supports you at work

4   Work four days a week: We believe working less is the future. We show up four days a week, at 32 hours maximum. No overtime!

   Get regular pay increases: We raise our salaries by 5% each year. You shouldn t need to switch jobs or be an expert negotiator to get higher compensation.

    Rest when you need to: You ll get 4 weeks of annual leave and 2 weeks of sick leave a year, plus national, state and territory government public holidays (Australian employees and contractors) or what s minimum in your country of residence.

     Spend time with your family: All new parents get 12 weeks of paid leave after twelve months of employment, including adoption and foster care (Australian employees and contractors) or what s minimum in your country of residence.

   Create your perfect workspace: You ll have a budget of A$1,500 to make your work environment enjoyable. We also cover up to A$500 a month for a coworking desk!

   Continue learning: Spend A$1,500 per year to attend events, take courses or buy books. Available after six months of employment.

   Get the hardware you need: You will receive a MacBook Pro laptop (or the equivalent of your choice) plus required peripherals.

See a full list of benefits on our Careers page.

About you

It s important to us that whoever joins Calibre thrives in this role. Here are skills and knowledge that will set you up for success:

You have substantial professional experience in Ruby and Ruby on Rails. You have a deep understanding of core concepts, scalability and maintenance.

You are comfortable with PostgreSQL and can write optimised SQL queries to obtain and write data as efficiently as possible.

Your code is thoroughly covered by integration and unit tests. You know how and when to add tests.

You are at home with the Unix shell. You often write bash scripts to automate your work.

You re well-versed in deploying your code to production and owning the release process.

You show resilience and patience when working with third-party services and APIs.

You care about the impact of your code on customers from multiple axes: privacy, security, experience and usability.

Your process involves documenting your work. Your code is understandable and predictable to your colleagues.

You are a proactive and clear communicator. You regularly express your work s scope, context and impact.

You re self-motivated and can work independently. You take the initiative to ensure that you have everything you need to work efficiently and call for support when required.

Our hiring process

We approach hiring with transparency and respect towards applicants in mind. Everyone receives a response at any stage, no matter the outcome.

Here s what you can expect:

Application submission. Follow the steps in the application form and respond to the required questions. No cover letters are needed! We encourage candidates to take time in getting to know who we are, what we build and how we think about work. We also ask you to respect the outlined process and not seek alternative application and contact methods.

Application screening. We review each application to understand your skills, experience and motivation to work at Calibre. You ll hear from us about the application status within seven business days.

Interviews and take-home project. Once your application passes the initial review, we will invite you to the first call about values and logistics. Next up, we ll talk to you about team collaboration. Later on, we might ask you to complete a paid project that showcases your skills.

Reference check. After you complete all interviews and we successfully evaluate the test project, we ask to chat with three people you worked with in the past. Preferably at least two are your previous managers.

Decision. If we decide you d be a great addition to our team, you ll receive an offer letter to join Calibre.

We know that people from underrepresented backgrounds may not apply for open positions unless they meet all criteria. If you re interested, we strongly encourage you to apply, so we can learn how your unique experience can help shape a better product and company!