(Part-Time, Contract/Freelance)

Position has been filled

UPDATE: Please be advised that this position has been currently filled. However, we may still be looking to grow our team again in the near future. If you would like to discuss potential future opportunities, we would be happy to hear from you. Please be advised, however, that we may not get back to you, depending on our availability to review submitted applications.

Thank you very much for your interest in joining our team!

About us

Epsilamic Solutions is expanding its digital experience agency branch. As a technical and creative partner to small businesses and high-growth startups, we help our clients build delightful customer experiences and set up their internal technical processes for success. 

Throughout the last few years, we’ve worked with a diverse set of customers, from boutique hotels to startups founded by Y Combinator alumni.

We are a very lean team with a startup mentality and a laser focus on customer outcomes, getting things done and bringing out the best of each other’s talents at work, while maintaining a positive, inclusive, and fun attitude in our work culture.

Epsilamic is a remote company, headquartered in Canada, with most of the work being done during EST/PST timezones. High autonomy, clear and friendly communication, and transparency are some of our most important core values, to make the most of async work in a distributed team.

Our current technical stack

• React, TypeScript, Next.js, Webpack+Babel build toolchain (non-CRA)
• Python, Chalice (serverless framework), SQLAlchemy, 
• AWS, a lot of AWS Lambda but we also have projects that involve Dockerized APIs
  • understanding how IAM roles work will be very helpful on some projects
  • at this point, knowledge of lower-level AWS services (EC2, ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, S3) is much more important than any knowledge of Amplify, Beanstalk, etc 
• Postgres, DynamoDB
• Contentful (headless CMS)

Note that this is some of our currently most-frequently used technologies. All of this is subject to change very fast (and a lot of that change may very well end up being the influence of your future work with us!).

We understand that it's impractical to ask that our new teammates come in with the exact same tech stack as what we use. If you already have experience with this stack - that's amazing. If not - that's totally okay, but we will ask you to pick up/study our tech stack and expect that you can get comfortable with it in a matter of a week or so.

Our work culture

• We are a startup
• Remote-first, async work with high autonomy
• Regular team meetings over Zoom with video
• We value our teammates' happiness over rigid process
  
• We welcome initiative, new ideas and collaborative decision making
  • With that said, if we get stuck in committee-decision-making, we believe in a Disagree-and-Commit approach
• We value courage to explore changes, pivots, and uncharted territories outside of our comfort zone
• We challenge established status-quo of the world when we think we can make it better
• We value our failures as a learning opportunity to help us grow
• We value our successes as an opportunity to show gratitude towards each other, and to remember what worked well
• We value long-term sustainable strategy over "heroism", all-nighters and burn-out. We'll be here for a very long time.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for a mid-level full-stack software developer, preferably with a slightly stronger emphasis on the front-end part of the stack, to join our team. 

Responsibilities will include:

• Implementing the front-end for various projects, given UI designs/wireframes and technical guidelines
• Improving our core UI technical platform by developing component libraries and documenting best practices
• Implementing the back-end for some of our projects in collaboration with a senior staff member
• Researching, recommending and helping our team adopt new tools, libraries and frameworks
• Together with the technical lead, participating in meetings with customers to provide technical context to discussions and to refine timeline/effort estimations
• Participating in regular stand-ups, sprint planning meetings with the team, as well as being available for collaborative Zoom work sessions (with reasonable notice - we're still mostly async).

This role is currently part-time (20h / week) with a possibility of being extended to full-time in the long-term future, based on the performance of both of the candidate and the company. Ideally, we are looking for a motivated technologist, who would be interested in growing together with the team over a long period of time. Depending on future company performance, there may also be a great opportunity for a more involved senior leadership role. 

Please note that this position is currently aimed at independent contractors/freelancers only - this is not employment (at least, for now). 

Please also note that due to some slight confusion regarding RemoteOK's guidelines, the annual salary maximum specified on this job posting is the "full-time equivalent" (i.e. what we'd be paying if we were hiring on a full-time basis). The annual salary minimum is what we'd be paying for part-time (half of the full-time equivalent). While it is possible that we may offer a conversion to full-time in the future, we are currently hiring for part-time only (i.e. you'd get $30-35K a year, and you'd work ~20h/week).

Detailed requirements

On the technical side, you’d be a great fit if you’re comfortable with the following:

Frontend

• A solid understanding of JavaScript fundamentals in the context of modern web applications
• At least 2-5 years of experience with React (preferred), Vue, Angular or a similar component framework
• Experience working with CSS-in-JS frameworks like styled-components, and/or frameworks like Tailwind.
• High-level understanding of modern front-end build tools (e.g. Webpack, Vite, or equivalent).
• Excellent knowledge of HTML, CSS and CSS extensions and preprocessors like Sass, PostCSS, etc
• Demonstrated attention to detail when integrating UI components, with an emphasis on visual consistency and usability. Knowledge of accessibility standards is great to have, but not required.
• Demonstrated attention to detail when writing and testing software logic and an ability to write clean, self-documenting code.

Backend

• A solid understanding of the client-server model, API design patterns, and microservice architectures. We won’t ask you to be an expert in distributed systems, however basic awareness of different architecture patterns at a high level is required.
• At least 2-5 years of experience with Python, JavaScript (Node.js), Java or another language in the context of developing APIs (REST or GraphQL).
• Excellent understanding of SQL in the context of any popular relational database (Postgres, MySQL, MSSQL, or another database), as well as awareness of how to retrieve query plans and explore basic performance optimizations.
• Solid understanding of at least one NoSQL database (any document, key-value or column stores are good - e.g.  DynamoDB/MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, or equivalent), with a basic understanding of architectural and performance implications of their use

Infrastructure

• Experience deploying low to medium-complexity applications on VMs or containers in at least one of popular cloud environment (AWS, DigitalOcean, Azure, GCP or any on-prem infrastructure management frameworks like OpenStack, etc).
• Understanding of CI/CD from a user’s perspective and experience working in projects that use Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline, GitHub Actions or anything similar.
• Solid understanding of containerization basics (Docker, lxc, or anything similar)
• Solid understanding of basic networking (OSI protocol stack and where HTTP and TLS fit in, TCP vs UDP, basic DNS architecture)
• Solid understanding of both client-side and server-side caching from a developer’s point of view. 

Fundamental technical skills

• Ability to work without advanced AI-assisted tooling such as GitHub Copilot (don’t worry, though - regular Googling/researching StackOverflow/etc is a must for our profession, and we won't ask you to memorize arbitrary APIs as part of your work).
  
• Excellent understanding and a responsible, proactive attitude towards information security from a developer’s point view, including securing password and access token, being able to use 2FA to access company resources, awareness of open-source software supply chain security issues in everyday work and common-sense security precautions.
• Knowledge of unit, integration and end-to-end testing patterns, and practical experience designing and writing tests in any framework on both the front end and the back end.
• Solid understanding of using shell scripts for everyday tasks (bash, zsh, or any other shell)
• Basic knowledge of Git and ability to work efficiently under different branching models
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field is preferred. However, if you have a unique set of circumstances that you believe gives you an equivalent level of experience, we will be happy to talk to you, hear your story and consider you application based on its objective merits.

Teamwork 

• Excellent/fluent written and verbal communication skills in English
• Visual presentability and a highly professional attitude at all times during customer meetings. Zoom webcam presence on customer meetings is part of our customer support culture
• Excellent research skills and critical thinking (e.g. technical suggestions should be made mostly based on facts and educated guesses, not solely based on popularity of frameworks/solutions).
• Willingness, ability and enthusiasm about learning new languages, frameworks and technologies very fast, when required for a particular project.
• Basic knowledge of common code review best practices using GitHub/GitLab or an equivalent system
• Experience using bug-tracking/task-tracking tools like Jira to plan everyday work
• Basic understanding of an agile development lifecycle
• An open mind for friendly criticism of your work during code reviews, and a willingness to follow established patterns and advice given by more senior staff
• A friendly and sociable attitude towards your fellow colleagues. We hope that we can be friends! :)

Feel free to disregard the below request to include a particular word in your application. That is automatically added by the job board app and is not part of our job posting. It does not protect anyone from bots in this day and age, and the real "Turing" test will be your Zoom interview.

Thank you for your time!

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Salary and compensation

$30,000 — $60,000/year

Benefits

🌎 Distributed team

⏰ Async

⬜️ No whiteboard interview

👀 No monitoring system

🚫 No politics at work

🎅 We hire old (and young)