Senior Backend Developer

Applicants must be resident in the UK or EU. To apply, send a CV to [email protected]

ABOUT THE ROLE

FLOWN is an early-stage tech startup and this role offers the opportunity to start right at the beginning of building a new tech stack. You'll be contributing to the design and development of the product, and steering the direction we take in the future.

We are developing tools, and providing access to spaces, that help our customers get into states of deep work and to think more creatively and productively. Over the next few months we'll be building: our marketing website, a property catalogue, a booking engine and payments solution, a content portal along with games and tools to support our members in embracing deep work principles.

We then have ambitious plans for the future once we're finished with those!

REQUIREMENTS

You should be curious, passionate about technology, and an upbeat and motivated presence in the team. We're all excited to be building a new and ambitious product from scratch and looking for someone who can match our enthusiasm.

You should be a data systems geek. Any developer can write code to query a database. What makes a great backend developer is an interest in the principles behind backend data models, code patterns and architecture. When should you denormalise backend data and what's the best way to keep the denormalised copy up to date? How do you decide what fields to add indexes to in a relational database and how would you measure the performance impact? What different levels of transaction isolation does our ACID database offer and what are the practical implications of each for our application? You should already have some knowledge like this and be keen to learn more. You should enjoy technical conversations with other developers, and be able to articulate your knowledge clearly.

The following experience is required:

• Multiple years experience designing and building backend data-driven services.
• Multiple years experience with JavaScript, either on the frontend or the backend
• TypeScript or another typed language

Bonus points for experience with:

• Designing data structures for efficiency and scalability, e.g. denormalisation in NoSQL databases, partitioning in SQL databases, caching strategies for APIs.
• Serverless architecture (especially function-as-a-service and event-driven architectures).
• Responsibility for deployments, monitoring and backups of production services.
• Working on personal projects or open source contributions - we love to see developers' side projects - even if they're not related to what we're building.

BENEFITS

We want to practice what we preach, and build a company and team that works creatively and productively. Here are some of the benefits you'll gain from this role:

• Scope and influence - you're joining the founding team and will be involved in shaping our product, what we do, and how we work.
• A focus on deep work - we exist to support deep work among our members, so we support our staff in developing their own distraction-free deep work practice.
• A strong team - we are led by a proven CEO & Founder, and the rest of the team is equally highly experienced. We also have a high-calibre of investors with a good amount of runway.
• Fully dispersed, flexible working - we are a remote-first company, and we've got lots of perks, tools and processes to make sure that works for everyone. We encourage individuals to establish working hours that enable them to work as productively as possible, and we understand that everyone needs a work/life balance.
• Team socials - we get together regularly to collaborate and have fun. We also embed virtual activities and other surprises into our working days

ABOUT FLOWN

Even before COVID, working in open-plan offices full of distractions was not the best environment for producing our best work. Studies show that our best productivity and creativity comes when you get a chance to do 'deep work' - uninterrupted focused time working on something significant. Post-COVID, the need for places to work ergonomically away from your office - either as an individual or as a team - is even greater. FLOWN is the first global brand seeking to provide the ideal physical and mental spaces for us to think and work more creatively and productively.

FLOWN will offer a marketplace of spaces suitable for individuals or teams to get away from their day-to-day to concentrate, contemplate or collaborate. We'll offer not only physical spaces - think Airbnb for Work - but mental spaces through our app and online services. Available to individuals and companies as a subscription, to be offered as an accompaniment or replacement to traditional office rental.

FLOWN is led by successful serial entrepreneur, Alicia Navarro, founder of Skimlinks (acquired by Connexity April 2020), and backed well-known entrepreneurs and angels such as Greg Marsh (OneFineStay), Taavet Hinrikus (Transferwise), Tom Allason (Shutl). FLOWN is seeking to create social impact by democratisating access to the kind of spaces that can best unleash our human potential, so we can not only solve real global problems but also live more meaningful lives.