Senior Software Engineer

Description

Memrise is an award-winning language learning system which combines cognitive science, entertaining content and advanced tech to empower our millions of users with linguistic confidence in just a few months of learning.

We were awarded “Best App of 2017” at Google I/O and featured prominently this year at Apple’s WWDC.

Nearly a year ago we secured Series B funding and we've been working on exciting new developments that will shape how our brand and products will look in the future. These developments include the creation of Decks (a new web app for user-generated content) and an upgrade and refresh of the Memrise web app. We are looking for a Software Engineer (Front End) to join the team and help us create faster and more responsive web interfaces. This roles gives a unique opportunity to shape the new version of our product with a fresher, more exciting design and the interesting technical challenges that will come with this.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of our web frontend stacks, both newer Next.js parts and older Django.
• Set standards for writing clean, readable and testable code in our web frontend.
• Review other colleagues’ code and provide technical guidance to more junior colleagues.
• Develop user interfaces of our web products (mostly Memrise, with a splash of Decks).

Our Stack

• We’re using React for web frontend, with Next.js to serve those page universally.
• We’re using Python 3, Django, Kubernetes, Aurora, Redis, ElasticSearch and Kinesis on the backend
• We practice Continuous Delivery, TDD, trunk based development, and automate everything.
• We’re fans of keeping things as simple as possible and being open minded about new ideas and new technologies.

What’s it like being an engineer at Memrise?

Memrise engineers are creative generalists that work autonomously in product-oriented cross-functional teams. The engineering team is small and dynamic, with an emphasis on ownership, impact and people over processes. We run hackathons every six weeks; some of our prominent features were originally creative hacks.

We have smooth, refined user interfaces to build that our users will adore; a fun, varied game-like core to our experience, which we’re iterating playfully; the challenges of meeting the needs of millions of users per day from across the world; and the big data to process and feed into our adaptive learning algorithms.

Requirements

Technical skills

• You're a technical leader with strong business knowledge and delivery skills, able to influence technical strategy in your area of expertise.
• Outstanding web development skills - expertise of HTTP, JS, CSS, web standards, accessibility, cross browser development.
• Good knowledge of React, Babel, Webpack or equivalents and building single page web applications. Familiarity with related backend technologies, such as Next.js and Node.js.
• Can architect a stack which performs well, is maintainable, and is a delight to code on.
• You have experience with automated web testing, especially end-to-end.

About you

• You know how to autonomously make good technical choices that solve business problems.
• You have experience working with product managers and designers to produce high quality user interfaces.
• You thrive in dynamic, collaborative environments, without a lot of process and procedure holding you back.

If you aren’t completely confident that you fit our exact criteria, please get in touch immediately. Humility is a wonderful thing and we’re not interested in hiring ‘rockstars’ or ‘ninjas’.

And we're at least as interested in character as in talent.

Benefits

A fully paid Memrise account, of course

- Share options, so you can retire on an island

- Budget for training, conferences and books

- Flexible working options (time-wise, plus we have standing desks)

- Private health insurance

- Quarterly hackathons

- Breakfast (the most important meal of the day)

- Snacks (the most enjoyable meal of the day)

- A startup-suitable array of teas and coffees

- Language classes with in-office tutors

- Pet friendly office and pet-petting colleagues

- Cycle-to-work scheme

- 50% off a PureGym membership

- And plenty more fun you’re welcome to ignore, including: team vacations, painting, meditation, yoga, football, dodgeball, running club, board games, and boxing classes.