Senior Software Engineer - Applications
THE JELLYVISION LAB NEEDS AN AMAZING SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER - APPLICATIONS
Founded by the creator of the YOU DON'T KNOW JACK® game series, The Jellyvision Lab, Inc. creates virtual teachers, advisors, and salespeople who make online learning and decision making delightful. In all that we do, our goal is to make complex topics simple and boring material interesting, using a combination of great design, unexpectedly funny content, and serious technology.
Of all the virtual people Jellyvision has created, the tallest and least afraid of bears is ALEX® (www.meetalex.com). ALEX helps companies talk their employees through the tricky choices they’ll have to make, like picking a health insurance plan, deciding how much to put in the 401(k), or whether they might want extra life insurance. Our customers love ALEX because he helps their employees figure out what’s best for their personal situations, which, in turn, saves our customers a boat-load of time and money - everybody wins! As we sell more and more of ALEX, we need more and more non-virtual (i.e., real life) people to keep the virtual ones amazing. That’s where you come in.
SO WHAT'S THIS JOB ABOUT?
To be successful in this role you must be the kind of software engineer who can turn their hand to both server-side and browser-side code and understand the ins and outs of each - a person who is looking to play with some cool technology and build some great products. Whether you got your start with a Computer Science degree, attending a boot camp, or by writing code on the side, you know what it is to write code and you love doing it.
There's a great deal of collaboration with a diverse team (which often leads to having fun) at Jellyvision. You'll be working on a bunch of different (but related) projects at any given time. Development is a team effort at Jellyvision, and all our development teams use Scrum, which means every day involves working with product owners, Scrum Masters, QA, DevOps, and the users we have right here in the building.
Jellyvision isn’t just made up of engineers—we’re also writers, project managers, producers, sales folks—you get the idea. In other words, you’ll be talking to a lot of people without a strong technical background, so you will need to demonstrate a respect for smart people who aren't engineers and are able to teach them and listen to them so we can all share our successes.
On a day-to-day basis, you'll be working on our products and on the tools that help the rest of the company build those products. You'll add features, fix bugs (what, bugs?! never!), test the stuff you built, and be involved in designing the next features and tools coming down the line.
WHAT KIND OF TECHNICAL SKILLS SHOULD I HAVE? YOU KNOW, LANGUAGES AND SUCH...
Our client-side code runs on (surprise!) JavaScript, and our server-side code uses Ruby. You'll need to have experience with one or both of these languages.
- Javascript:We're using React and Redux most of the time, but we have a few other frameworks floating around, so if you're handy with Angular or Backbone that's fine too. What's important is that you can apply your knowledge toward writing JavaScript-based web applications.
- Ruby: We've worked with both Rails & Grape, so we're not beholden to any particular framework. If you don't have a Ruby background but you do know PHP, Perl, Python, or Node and you've got solid fundamentals, we're pretty confident you can learn Ruby once you get here.
- HTML & CSS: Anyone who's done some web development will have written HTML and CSS, so bonus points if you're familiar with a templating language like Mustache or Dust or a CSS preprocessor like Less or Sass.
- Testing: You should be the kind of person who tests their code as a part of writing it, whether that's TDD-style or writing them after the fact. You should know your way around a testing suite or two.
- Source Control: Experience developing software with Git or some other kind of source control will benefit you greatly. If you've been using SVN or Mercurial and you're ready for something new, we're open to that. Most of your teammates will be happy to show you the ropes.
"SENIOR" CAN MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS...WHAT DOES SENIOR MEAN TO JELLYVISION?
If you’re the seasoned engineer for us, you’ve got a few years under your belt, have worked on some large projects, and have guided your team through said projects.
You should have solid experience with the ecosystems of JavaScript and Ruby; modern JavaScript build pipeline, including task runners, transpilers, bundling, and so on. You’ve got examples of clean Ruby architecture and transparent data modeling, and can handle writing database queries in SQL, as well as NoSQL tools like CouchDB. You are fearless in the face of old code (Flash, PHP).
Got an eye for style or great UI/UX? Anything else relevant that you think makes you a rockstar senior? Tell us about it!
ANYTHING ELSE?
Yes. We share a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere, so we hire nice, bright, funny people who are willing to work hard. Our credo is a simple one: be helpful. And we believe we can be most helpful if our workforce is as diverse in thought, perspective, and culture as the people who use our products. We are looking to add amazing folks to our team who will bring diversity across many lines, including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity, sex, and country of origin.
ARE THERE ANY PERKS? Yes, we love perks.
- Competitive pay, stock options and benefits. 401(k) with matching. And we pay 100% of the cost of premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance for our employees (as long as you qualify for our tobacco-free discount; if you’re a tobacco user, your medical premiums will be higher than $0). We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental and vision insurance.
- Casual dress and a flexible schedule. Come in a sweatshirt, jeans, whatever, like everyone else here.
- Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of intelligent, talented and innovative folks. Although most hours the place is deathly quiet (we're a focused bunch), this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment, which makes a nice way to spend the day.
- Free food. Every week, we stock our kitchen with free healthy snack foods, and we have a “hot lunch” catered once a week to give people a reason to hang out and eat together.
- Easy transportation. We’re really close to the 'L' and the Halsted (#8) bus (right by the Apple Store and Mega Whole Foods too), and we have a transit FSA that allows you to dedicate pre-tax dollars to public transportation expenses. And a number of our employees like to bike to work, so we also have showers and lockers in the office.
- Did we mention our yoga class? We bring a pro instructor right to the office. Fully subsidized by Jellyvision and fully optional, btw.
- Oh! And we have a massage chair. Not just any massage chair, my friend. It’s the HumanTouch HT 5320 WholeBody™ Massage Chair. Feeling a little stiff? Sit down. Relax. Feel better? Good. Okay, back to work.
INTERESTED? Great, we look forward to reading your application - make sure it includes:
- A cover letter that highlights three reasons you think you’d be great for the gig, focusing on how your past work experience has prepared you for this kind of position – or why you think you can rock the job even though you don’t have past work experience that’s perfectly aligned. Writing is key to all that we do, and we weigh cover letters heavily.
- Your resume.
You will receive an auto-reply confirming that we've received your application.
If you decide to apply, please know that every complete application will be carefully reviewed. Seriously! We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application. And we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us awhile to get back to applicants, so please NO PHONE CALLS. The time we spend responding to phone calls and emails inquiring about where we are in the process is time that we could be spending actually moving the process along – so please be patient with us!
Thanks for your interest in Jellyvision!