Blinkist

Senior Software Developer / Entrepreneur

Posted on Jan 30, 2023

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Job Details

Full Time
📍Remote
🌍 Europe
🧔Senior

About Blinkist

We offer the best selection of non-fiction knowledge in bite-sized, digestible formats. Our catalogue gives access to key insights from 5,000+ nonfiction books, original podcasts and author-driven content across 27 categories.

Blinkist exists to spark understanding.✨ We're helping people enrich their minds with powerful ideas, and turn ordinary moments into extraordinary learning opportunities—anytime, anywhere.

Our unique culture of empowerment, mutual respect, and transparency has always been our defining characteristic. We support each other and carve out opportunities for every individual to develop and grow. We strongly believe that diversity powers innovation, thus we celebrate and support our differences, providing equal opportunities for employment and career growth. We embrace a flexible, remote-friendly way of working that supports different needs and lifestyles.

🌟 We are proud to have been selected by LinkedIn as one of the Top 25 Startups in Germany. Glassdoor and Kununu ratings put us amongst Berlin’s top three employers.

The Position

Are you an ambitious software developer looking for an exciting opportunity to make a real impact in a startup environment? We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated developer to join our team and take on exciting challenges.

As a member of our team, you will have the opportunity to work closely with the founders on the development of a new product. Your strong debugging and troubleshooting skills will be crucial as you quickly and effectively resolve issues in complex systems. Your fearless attitude toward diving into large, unfamiliar codebases will allow you to navigate and understand them with ease.

In a startup environment, it is crucial to have a pragmatic approach to decision-making and the ability to prioritize tasks and make efficient trade-offs to get things done. As a tool-builder, you will have the opportunity to automa\te manual tasks and improve our users’ experiences.

Your generalist approach and broad skill set, combined with your proactive attitude and strong communication skills, will make you a valuable asset to our team. We are looking for someone who is comfortable taking ownership of tasks and making fast decisions in an uncertain environment. If you are excited about the opportunity to work closely with the founders on a new product and make a meaningful contribution to our startup, we encourage you to apply now!

If you choose to join our team in Berlin, you'll have access to our modern office space in Neukölln and enjoy healthy plant-based meals prepared fresh every day by our very own chef. 🥑

Requirements

  • 5+ years experience with end-user product software development - you've built and launched multiple user solutions and brought them to production
  • Generalist approach, with a broad hands-on programming skillset
  • Familiarity with a diverse range of end-user technologies (mobile apps, web apps, backends)
  • Proactive attitude and strong communication skills - able to work effectively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders
  • Experience working closely with founders on the development of new products, with the ability to thrive in an uncharted environment
  • Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills - able to quickly and effectively resolve issues in complex systems
  • Experience diving into large, unfamiliar codebases and using tools to navigate and understand them
  • Ability to make pragmatic decisions and prioritize in a fast-paced startup environment
  • Experience building tools to automate manual tasks and improve productivity

Our Hiring Process

All interviews are done remotely via Zoom. Please refer to your email invitation and calendar for the meeting link and further details.

1️⃣ Phone Screening

  • ⏰ Duration: 15 min
  • We’ll briefly discuss the role you applied for, go over some of the basic requirements and learn a bit about your professional experience.

2️⃣ Hiring Manager interview

  • ⏰ Duration: 30-45 min
  • You will meet your future manager and get to know each other. You will hear more about our team, mission and vision. We will deep dive into your technical and analytical experience and your growth trajectory.

3️⃣ Work on a Coding challenge

  • ⏰ Suggested Time invest: about 2h
  • The team has prepared an exciting take-home challenge for you.
  • It should showcase your approach to common day to day challenges of your role at Blinkist. We can't wait to share it with you!

4️⃣ In-Depth Interview

  • ⏰ Duration: 60 min
  • We’d love to discuss your ideas , learn a bit more about your approach and review your solution with your future teammates. You will go through your code and answer some questions on your results. 🙂

4️⃣ Remote Day at Blinkist

  • 💬 Multiple interviewers
  • ⏰ Time investment: 3-4h

Your remote Day with Blinkist will give you a feel for what it's like to work with us. Over the course of this final round, you'll meet and spend time with various business stakeholders. This will be a great chance to ask any final question about working at Blinkist. The agenda will include:

1. Pair programming Session - 90min - You will do some pair programming with some of your future colleagues.

Here is some context for the pair programming session 👇🏼

  • We have a dedicated Git repository that contains an excerpt of our codebase written in Ruby (on Rails) using Ruby 3.1.2.
  • Please make sure to have Ruby 3.1.2 set up on your machine you should be good to go! (In fact, any 3.1.x Ruby version should work with a minor change to the codebase).
  • You can use any IDE you like.
  • The pair programming session is focused on patterns, coding principles and communicating/discussing ideas. If you don't know the exact syntax for a change you want to make, we will help you out 😊

2. Stakeholder Interview - 30min - Meet one of our product managers, one of your future business stakeholders

3. Meet your Future Lead - 30-45min - Meet your future manager (*This interview step will be skipped in case you already met your manager in the first call)

4. Meet the Team - 30 min - Gather with your future teammates and ask any final curiosity!

We’ll share more details around the agenda for the day and the interview panel ahead of time. 💫

We sincerely hope this will also be a great opportunity for you to see exactly how we work and learn whether Blinkist is a great next step for you.

We understand how valuable the feedback can be for your development and growth. We are happy to provide you with specific interview feedback upon request following the technical assessment and later stages of the process.

Benefits

  • 30 vacation days + local public holidays in your place of work
  • Virtual stock options plan
  • Quarterly days of learning and wellbeing
  • An extra day off for you birthday
  • Unlimited home-office with a monthly workspace allowance
  • Learning & development budget
  • Coaching budget for minorities and mothers returning from their leave
  • Physical and mental health support through various partners
  • Relocation and visa support for Germany
Senior Software Developer / Entrepreneurat Blinkist