Backend Engineer (Rails)
Highlights
- We are a remote-first Series A and VC-backed software company with ~40 team members distributed across the Americas and Europe.
- Looking for a Backend Engineer with 5+ years SaaS experience living in the US, Canada, or Brazil to join our product team
- Salary range for this role is $120-180k per annum (offer will be based on your seniority, equity and geography)
The Backend engineer role
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🧠 Essential skills for this role
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- 5+ years working full-time as a Rails Engineer.
- Fluency with Ruby on Rails, MongoDB, Sidekiq, RSpec, and experience in test-driven codebases.
- You thrive in collaborative engineering environments (APIs, API documentation, handoff to frontend engineers, iterative development, etc.) and product teams (designers, PMs) to review specifications for architectural implementation decisions.
- Experience integrating with third-party APIs, writing defensive code, working with feature flags, improving performance, etc.
- Knowledge of frontend technologies (JavaScript, HTML, React, etc.).
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📝 Other requirements
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- A home office, stable high-speed internet connection, and the ability to work independently in a remote environment
- You are geographically located in the US, Canada or Brazil. Note: Even if you are willing to work these hours we unfortunately cannot consider your application for this role.
- Fluency (written and verbal) in English.
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💸 Compensation & Benefits
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- Salary range for this role is $120k-180k USD annually, based on experience and amount of early-stage equity
- Flexible work hours and generous time off, plus no-meeting Fridays!
- New M3 MacBook w/24GB ram, and a $1k home office budget for your office setup
- Work with some of the best product people in the world as customers
- Fully-paid team retreats (next one in the first week of May!)
- High-quality standards, regular feedback, and opportunities to help you grow quickly
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🐣 Onboarding process
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- We create a customized and structured Onboarding doc corresponding to your Day 1, Week 1, Month 1 and Months 2-6 periods. We value documentation, and encourage new team members to write down any and all questions they have from the beginning
- You’ll have a buddy (for non-functional questions) and a coach (for function specific needs) to seek help from.
- There will be regular check-ins with our Engineering Manager to ensure you’re getting up to speed and your questions are answered
- Early on, you will “shadow” and “pair” with other Chameleon engineers as well as have your own independent work (e.g. enhancements to existing functionality to start) as you gain confidence to take on new projects end-to-end.
Apply now to be our new backend engineer
Responsibilities as an Engineer at Chameleon
Product Engineering
You’ll build and maintain the internal/external APIs, backend logic for our codebases. We believe that we can, given sufficient time, implement anything! Part of the job is to help the rest of the engineering team accomplish their projects and goals.
Project Management
You will collaborate and be responsible for keeping a tight feedback loop with our Product Team, by discussing details, providing feedback, helping defining and shaping specifications of the features and projects you’ll be working on, while ensuring alignment with technical best practices.
Project Leadership
We encourage input and action beyond just the technical aspects. From spec to release, you’ll be responsible for keeping a tight loop with the rest of the team, ensuring that you rapidly reach out to your team to solve blockers, and ensuring a smooth rollout of new features for our customers.
Engineering Culture and team
Our current engineering team consists of ~10 Engineers, 3 QAs, 2 Designers and 1 PM.
👩💻 Async first
We default to async discussions/communication (via Slack threads, Linear ticket comments, Loom videos).
💫 Trust & Independence
We value and encourage self-management. Trust is a key element to our success as individuals. Each person adjusts their work schedule according to what best works for themselves, considering work <> life balance.
🦜 Transparent communication
Proactive communication, collaboration and action on blockers. We encourage messages in public channels, so we have visibility if someone needs help.
🫛 Pod structure
The product team works in small pods focused on a specific feature/product (Quality, UX, Demos, Better, Bets, etc.).
🧗 Kaizen
We have a weekly “Show and Tell” to discuss current projects, debrief on completed and talk about how we can improve for the future.
🪶 Light on meetings
We do not have “daily standups." Instead, we offer optional office hours time slots through the week, and encourage ad-hoc Tuple pairing sessions.
The hiring process/timeline
Our hiring process is designed to give you a glimpse of what it’s like at Chameleon. We want you to be able to showcase your skills in a way that mimics our ways of working, so you can ensure this is the right fit for you!
We aim to get back to you within ~1 week of you submitting the application form IF we are interested in setting up a call.
- Intro chat
- Let’s take this opportunity to get to know each other and Chameleon. Please bring questions! This is your first chance to ensure that this role and our team are what you are looking for.
- Skills Interview
- You will meet with our Engineering Manager to dig into role-specific questions and discuss your previous experience and knowledge as an Engineer.
- Take-home exercise
- This will be a technical exercise that we expect to take ~2-4 hours in total. This is not a live coding challenge. It will resemble the kind of work you will do, to help us assess your strengths and abilities.
- Technical debrief interview
- If we're impressed with your exercise, we'll discuss it with you to understand why you made certain choices and what you might have done differently
- References (as needed)
- We like to talk to 2–3 references (which we’ll collect in the process) to help us understand how to best support your onboarding.
- Offer!
- At this point we are all convinced that you and Chameleon are great for each other, so we'll agree on your compensation and start date!