Lead Developer (Full Stack Rails)

Please note: To apply, please follow the instructions at the bottom of this job description. We will sadly be unable to consider any applications that don’t follow these instructions.

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The Role

We’re looking for a new Lead Developer to join our friendly team! We’re hoping to find someone who loves programming, cares about making beautiful web applications that are simple and fun to use, and who is pragmatically-minded, able to blend business needs with software excellence. If this sounds like it could be you, we’d love you to apply.

Kaido is a platform that helps companies develop better team cultures, helping organisations build healthier, happier, more productive places to work. We have four products:

• Our Wellbeing Challenges have been running for 5 years, with over 50,000 participants - 89% of whom say they notice an improvement in their health and 97% of whom would recommend us to a friend. Learn more at https://kaido.org/challenge
• Our recently launched Experiences are fun ways for teams to do things together away from the grind of work. Check out https://kaido.org/experiences/... for an example!
• Our Culture Academy, launching on Nov 1st, is a 3-month cohort-based training course that empowers individuals to make positive impact in their team culture: https://kaido.org/academy
• We’re also building out various Team Culture Tools, that help teams understand themselves better and build better culture together: https://kaido.org/tools

We’re a young startup with 8 full-time team members, looking to raise our Series A in March 2023. We’ve already attracted huge customers such as HSBC and KPMG, as well as hundreds of smaller businesses. You’ll be joining the company at a formative time - you’ll be a key early team member with equity and a strong voice in the company.

Our tech stack is Ruby on Rails, running on AWS via Terraform. We run on Rails 7 and use Hotwire (Turbo and Stimulus) to power our Javascript. We care a lot about our product looking great - our designs are created in Figma and we use Tailwind to help manage our CSS. Take a look at our homepage (https://kaido.org) to see what we consider a nice looking product!

You will be responsible for leading the technical development of the product. You will be building on our existing codebase, developing new Experiences and Tools, and refactoring our older Challenges to bring them in line with our latest code. This means that you need a solid understanding and multi-year experience with Ruby on Rails, a reasonable level of comfort with writing production Javascript, and preferably some experience with Turbo and Stimulus. You should be comfortable implementing designs to a pixel-perfect standard and working autonomously on code. Once we’ve closed our Series-A, we’ll hire two more developers to work alongside you, and you may then like to take more of a technical leadership role, with the potential to move into a CTO role in the future.

Here are some details of the role:

• A starting salary between £50k and £80k depending on experience + Share Options.
• The role is full time (40hrs/week).
• A truly flexible, remote-first, working culture.
• A collaborative, creative and inspiring working environment. No shouty bosses, presenteeism or unexpected deadlines.
• Learning and development tailored to your role (if desired).
• Paid Parental Leave
• Matched pension contributions up to 3%.
• 35 days paid holiday.
• We will pay for access to a local co-working space (if desired).

And some requirements:

• You’ll be primarily based in the UK.
• You are comfortable speaking and writing English to a professional standard.
• You are excited to work in a diverse, inclusive team that cares about culture and where honest, empathic communication is the norm, and self-improvement is a lived value.

The application process is as follows:

• To apply, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject “Lead Developer Application”. Your email should include a short ~10min video (we strongly recommend using Loom), which tells us a little about you (both personally and professionally), your relevant experience, and why you’re interested in the role.
• We will review your Loom and if we feel like you could be a good fit, will put you through to the next phase. This phase consists of two exercises, both of which can be completed asynchronously in your own time: The first will assess CSS skills and should take under 2 hours to complete. If we are happy with the quality of your CSS, we will ask you to implement a small Rails project, which should take no more than 3 hours to complete.
• If we are happy with the quality of both exercises, we will put you through for a final interview and then make a final decision. We expect only a small handful of applicants to reach this stage.
  

We will keep you fully updated at all times and aim to make a final decision by November 4th.

On a final note, research has shown that people from under-represented groups are less likely to apply for jobs if they don't feel they fit all of the criteria. If you think you'd enjoy the role and could do a good job, but are not sure if you're fully qualified, please email and discuss it with us!