Job Description

About You

Do you have 5+ years working experience with professional development of web applications? Are interested in joining an innovative social enterprise serving the international development community? Do you want to help maintain and expand a complex software system that serves digital content informing an audience of over 1 million global development professionals? Are you excited to be a part of a dynamic company that’s growing fast and has an open, teamwork-focused culture?

We’re looking for a bright, professional and passionate Senior Software Engineer for our Barcelona-based product team to ensure that our member community has a positive user experience when interacting with our content. You thrive in an environment where you’re responsible for your own work while getting all the support you need. You also don’t take yourself too seriously and are eager to work in a multicultural environment of experts like yourself. You’re keen to help your teammates, share your knowledge, learn from others, and welcome both positive and constructive feedback.

Does this sound like you? Then keep reading…

What you’ll do at Devex

As Senior Software Engineer, you will be responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of efficient, reusable, and reliable code - mostly in the Ruby programming language. Your main focus will be on back-end technologies with occasional gigs in the front-end.

General responsibilities:

• Work on new and existing features to be rolled out to production
• Write clean and tested code in accordance with our style guides
• Review your peers’ code, participate in pair programming and provide mentorship to junior and intermediate developers
• Collaborate constantly with other engineers, designers, team leads and stakeholders for the best possible outcome
• Analyze requirements and propose your ideas and technical solutions in the context of general business goals
• Make strategic technical decisions related to new products and functionality

In your first weeks, you’ll:

• Get to know your peers and set up your work environment
• Have your first contributions deployed to our production environment
• Finish some minor projects (epics) as part of a small team
• Become familiar with the architecture of our entire software system
• Better understand the scope of Devex’s services and mission

By the time you finish your first year, you’ll:

• Become an integral part of the Product Team
• Be capable of implementing high-level (sometimes vague) tasks completely independently
• Be trusted to work autonomously to solve most problems that come up
• Shape the software development life-cycle
• Take on technical leadership of individual projects

Tech Stack and Tools

The Devex website and related systems are hosted on Amazon Web Services, all developed code is version controlled via git on GitHub and ideally well tested. The main programming language for the back-end services is Ruby, using the Ruby on Rails and grape frameworks. The front-end is a mix of Ruby on Rails and AngularJS. Nearly all data is stored in a relational database (PostgreSQL) and searched over via Elasticsearch.

Required Qualifications

Here are the basic requirements we’re looking for in the role…

• At least 5 years of experience in professional web application development
• EU work authorization
• Strong skills in written and spoken English
• A solid grasp of object-oriented programming, automated software testing, databases, and the application development life-cycle in general.

Nice-to-haves

Besides the basics, here’s what we’d love to see…

• Experience with Ruby on Rails or allied technologies
• Familiarity with git and/or GitHub and version control workflows
• Experience with relational databases and/or search engines like Solr / Elasticsearch
• Understanding of cloud-based infrastructure like AWS / Google Cloud Platform / Azure
• Design and/or implementation of complex applications of some scale
• Knowledge of JavaScript and frameworks like React or AngularJS
• Exposure to agile methodologies, meaning iterative and incremental development
• Staying on the cutting edge of software development

That said, anything else that you bring to the table which adds value to our team is highly appreciated.

What we offer

At Devex, we know that our team is our biggest asset. That’s why we offer the following benefits to all employees:

• Competitive salary
• High-end computer of your choice (Linux or macOS) and accessories
• If you need a license for your favorite editor or IDE, it will be provided
• Private health insurance plan
• Budget for conferences and professional training
• Apart from standard paid vacation leave, two additional weeks off: one in August and Christmas through New Years.
• Two Yay Days (extra holidays with the condition that you have to do something awesome and share a picture of it!)
• A fully stocked snack pantry, fruits, coffee & tea bar
• Regular social events and wellness activities

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability.

Ready to get started? Get the conversation started by sending your CV and cover letter now!

About the Organization

Devex is the media platform for the global development community. As a social enterprise, we connect and inform development, health, humanitarian and sustainability professionals through news, business intelligence and funding and career opportunities. Our goal is to do more good for more people. Today, we reach over 1 million aid workers and development professionals, and we can't wait to make it even more.

We live our mission and bring our world-class academic and professional experience to work every single day to change the world. Our diverse global team includes 130+ web-savvy journalists, analysts, developers, designers, and marketers. Our headquarters is in Washington, DC., we have offices in Barcelona and Manila, and reporters on 5 continents.

Our Product team is responsible for making Devex's digital content available to our community in the best possible way. Most of our work is centered around the website devex.com and its related services, which is entirely developed and maintained by our team. For this, we communicate with stakeholders throughout the company and also act as an interface to all other things technical. We manage the cloud infrastructure running our digital services, implement business logic to process and store data, design and develop appealing user interfaces that allow our users to interact with all kinds of content. We are an international team of over 15 people, mostly based in the Barcelona office, and constantly reflect on our work to improve team culture and efficiency.