Full Stack Tech/Team Lead - remote

Uploan
Posted 4 years ago
Us
Uploan we’re building a suite of financial products to give people more stability, control over their future and support when they need it the most. Come and help us transform the lives of working people in emerging markets by helping them reach their financial goals.
The Job

We’re looking for a Tech Lead that knows their way around the full technology stack, understands the reasons for not always living on the bleeding edge, but knows that to be a successful company we need to be brave. We take experimentation and learning seriously so being able to share your experience with the team is a must. For what it’s worth the team uses React on the front-end, so that’s required. The back-end is Java &Python focused, but microservice driven which allows for flexibility.

We’re not looking for rockstars or ninjas as no single person is bigger than the team. We want someone who is friendly, thoughtful, and mature. Be patient and kind and you’re on the right track. Be relentlessly honest but polite and you’re well on your way to having the traits we’re looking for. You’ll have to show the team best practices and they’ll lean on you when they have problems and need help so treat this as a responsibility and not a power.

We're agnostic on your location, but since this role will require working closely with product and other engineers, we're aiming for 6hrs overlap with Manila time (UTC+8).

Here are some of the expectations of this role:

• Be a role model for other members within the engineering community at UpLoan. Your standards of code quality, delivery, and attitude should set you apart.
• Become a close partner of the Head of Engineering, working alongside them on new initiatives and developing long term technical strategy.
• Building both front-end and back-end development skills as core competencies within Uploan, and supporting junior members to learn and thrive. Building a strong and patient code review culture is essential to the role.
• Be a firm believer in pragmatism and all it entails. We’re practical and we understand that we don’t always have the ability to get things done the way we intend. Help us deliver the longer and more deliberate strategy of continuous improvement.
• Taking the lead on the solutions and features for your team, building out a balanced profile of software to help users achieve their goals. Work to build consistency across projects, caring deeply about high quality documentation and interfaces. We’re looking for Managers of One (search for the Signal v Noise article), so defining your own direction and helping the direction of the team is important.
• Be highly conscientious of the end-user, and understanding that if you put the user first everything will follow. You’ll continue to take part as a leading member of a product team, so radical focus on user needs is a must.

Requirements:

• Strong experience working in product teams, interfacing with junior engineers, and working closely alongside Product Managers to refine requirements, flush out technical dependencies, and collaborate with other teams to produce high quality software.
• Being able to refine an Agile process to work for your team, knowing when to estimate as a group and when to give an estimate yourself.
• 5+ years in the industry.
• 3+ years of demonstrable experience using JavaScript frameworks, with demonstrable commercial React experience. We use ReactJS, Redux, Webpack, pre-compiled CSS and standard tooling like Git and NodeJS. Help us experiment with Typescript.
• 3+ years back-end experience, with demonstrable commercial microservice experience. Our stack is largely Java so that would help, but we also need someone to drive forward modern architectures. If you know why you would &wouldn’t use Cassandra at the persistence layer (for example) then there’s a high likelihood that you’re a match.
• Experience and good understanding of API design and service boundaries.
• Solid understanding of design patterns, test-driven development, and software development best practices.
• Good understanding of building scalable apps.
• Demonstrable experience on unit testing.

What we can offer:

• An environment where you can do your best work and not be drowning in messages and direct requests all day. 
• Accurate feedback, full transparency and a lot of autonomy over how you do your work, just be prepared to explain the rationale behind your decisions - it’s good for openness.