Senior Software Engineer, Missions

Job Description

Our everyday digital experiences are in the midst of a realtime revolution. Whether attending an event in a virtual venue, receiving realtime financial information, or working with colleagues in an online collaborative environment - consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. At Ably we’re not just witnessing this revolution - we’re powering it.

At the heart of our mission lies a commitment to putting developers first. Ably provides a suite of APIs to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime, delivering billions of messages for millions of devices every day and supporting organizations like Split, Hubspot, Toyota and Genius Sports.

Working at Ably means helping to build the infrastructure and technology that will power and shape the future of the internet. The opportunity in front of us is immense. And we’d like your help.

About this role

Product innovation at Ably is delivered by highly autonomous, fast moving, cross-functional mission teams. As a Senior Developer, you'll be at the heart of a mission, working extremely closely with a core team composed of a Product Manager and a team of mission engineers, with additional support from product marketing, developer education, interaction design, and platform technology teams.

You’ll be hands-on, solving difficult technical problems. But you’ll also think like an entrepreneur, considering the business impact of your work. You’ll bring an experimental mindset and contribute to a positive team culture that celebrates delivering great software.

Day to day you will

• Build innovative solutions. You’ll work together with a talented group of skilled engineers to ideate and build innovative solutions to complex problems, such as:
  • Building a fault-tolerant, high-throughput database streaming application for event-driven architectures,
  • Designing and implementing intuitive APIs and tooling for building delightful multi-user collaborative experiences.
  • Developing powerful features like chat-room moderation that enable developers to build live chat applications at planet scale.
• Learn from fast-moving experiments to shape new features. You’ll be part of a team that values a culture of experimentation and continuous learning, leveraging insights to inform the evolution of the product.
• Design developer-friendly APIs and SDKs. You’ll help build products that are intuitive, easy to use and delight developers, helping them experience success with the Ably’s features easily.
• Be driven by “Developer First” principles. You’ll collaborate closely with other engineers and the rest of the mission team to explore and discover effective solutions that address most important problems developers face.
• Assume responsibility for the end-to-end development process. You’ll design, develop, deploy and optimise innovative solutions to those problems in ways that you would want to use as a developer yourself.
• Celebrate delivering real customer value. You’ll push hard to see your work get into customers’ hands without delay because you are hungry to see the impact it will have in their projects.
• Flourish in a supportive environment. You’ll be part of a supportive work environment that fosters and celebrates individual growth and encourages innovation.
• Engage with the developer community. You’ll actively engage with the developer community, both directly and indirectly, to gather feedback, establish relationships, and promote Ably’s solutions.

We'd love to hear from you if you have

• Experience with multiple programming languages including solid skills with JavaScript/TypeScript and at least one statically-typed compiled language like Golang.
• Experience working with a range of technologies across the stack, including (but not limited to) AWS, databases, networks, caches, web technologies.
• A strong intuition for high-quality API design and appreciation for great developer experiences.
• A product mindset, with a strong focus on customer outcomes and the ability to quickly comprehend and convert business requirements into technical solutions.
• A pragmatic approach; the ability to to quickly and successfully embrace change and adapt effectively in response.
• Experience in dynamic, early stage startups where adaptability and resourcefulness are crucial.
• A transparent and collaborative “build in the open” mindset.
• Passion for the art of software development and modern trends that shape how developers work.
• The ability to self-start and you embrace a growth mindset.
• Excited at the prospect of being entrepreneurial and driving innovation in new product areas for a developer-first product.

It would be great, but not essential if you have

• Experience building developer-first products.
• Experience working on multiplayer, collaborative applications.
• High-level knowledge of distributed systems and concurrent programming.
• Experience with products that are brought to market primarily through a product led growth approach.

What’s it like to work at Ably?

We’re tackling planet-scale problems and our ambitions are a testament to that. You’ll join a successful, deeply motivated and collaborative team that thrives on innovation, experimentation and autonomy.

To get a sense of life at Ably, visit our careers page at ably.com/careers. You can also read about the origins of Ably's core values on our blog (ably.com/blog/ably-values).

Our aspiration is to foster a company culture that's built on inclusivity and mutual respect among all team members. We recognise that each person is different and will want to be supported in different ways which is why our benefits (ably.com/ukbenefits) are there to help you focus on your needs today and prepare you for your future.

Ably is a remote-first company and, amongst other things, we offer a generous holiday allowance, private healthcare and substantial opportunities for learning and development, and access to a wealth of resources dedicated to your wellbeing. We’re proud to go the extra mile to support the welfare and prospects of Ablyans and their long-term goals.

Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Ably

We believe our differences as individuals is what makes us great. Our people are at the heart of what we do, and we encourage everyone to be their most authentic self at Ably: we see inclusivity and openness as fundamental to creating long-term success as an organization. We encourage applications from all backgrounds regardless of age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, race, religion, educational background or neurodiversity. Ably has an amazing opportunity ahead of us, and we want anyone to be able to contribute to that opportunity.

If you enjoy working as part of a technology company, value open source, and love solving hard problems - then we’d love to hear from you, regardless of whether you fit the job description exactly or not. If in doubt, drop us an email; we’d be more than happy to give you some advice on your application.