Front-End Product Developer

Posted Apr 29

Description

Whimsical is a B2B SaaS company on a mission to make collaboration more enjoyable and productive by building an all-in-one collaboration hub. We are passionate about user experience, interconnectedness of tools and building software that feels like magic.

We’re now looking for a Front-end Product Developer to help move our vision forward primarily in ClojureScript!

You will be working in one of our product teams, alongside a PM, Designer, and other Developers

While we would have your back on everything to get you started, we are looking for someone with experience and an open mind for dealing with code, product, users, architecture, and UI.

A growth mindset is important to us, we imagine you have basic knowledge of Clojurescript and a healthy motivation to learn and grow, not only within Clojurescript but also in product, users, and business knowledge.

Our front-end stack is Cljs, Reframe, Reagent, among others. Our back-end stack is Clojure, Postgres, Redis, ECS, and is AWS based.

Day-to-day work

At Whimsical you can expect your day-to-day to include:

  • Scoping, understanding, and implementing features: Your primary task would be to work with other teammates to figure out the best way to take a Shape Up pitch from idea to deployment within the cycle.
  • Support our customers: We have awesome customers, and supporting them often includes getting some help from the person that implemented the particular feature a customer is having issues with.
  • Support the team: Review pull requests, refactor code, help with both technical and non-technical issues, and in general help each of us end the day better than when we woke up.
  • Potentially taking on-call duties in your time zone: We try to take advantage of the fact that we're a small, geographically distributed team by delegating the first-responder duties to the people who are awake at that particular moment.

Indicators that this could be a good role for you

  • You feel that our philosophy resonates with you and can see it guiding your decisions while at Whimsical.
  • You have 2+ years of front-end development experience
  • You feel excited about building tools that help others seamlessly collaborate and think together
  • You have experience building complex interactive web applications
  • You have used ClojureScript before and know your way around it
  • You have a solid knowledge of modern JavaScript and React (Bonus: Reagent/re-frame)
  • You are capable of effectively working with APIs and basic data structures (arrays, stacks, queues)
  • You have knowledge of measuring, analyzing, and fixing performance problems
  • You're able to work autonomously and stay self-motivated. (Bonus: previous experience working on remote team)
  • You are fluent in English

Requirements

  • To ensure the best collaboration and synergy with the rest of the team, we’re looking for someone based in
  • European Union 🇪🇺
  • United Kingdom 🇬🇧
  • Relevant work experience and track record
  • Submitted resume
  • Thoughtful, thorough responses to all the application questions.

Benefits

  • 100% Remote: Our team is spread across North America, Europe and Oceania, and we’ve got you covered if you prefer to work from a coworking space.
  • Salary: Annual salary at $94,000 - $118,000, based on experience
  • Vacation: 6 weeks of paid time off each year
  • Parental Leave: 16 weeks paid by company
  • Equipment: We provide all the tech you need to work successfully
  • Summits: We try to bring everyone together at least twice a year, our next summit will be in Riga in July 2023

How we work

We use an adapted version of Basecamp's Shape Up approach, which for us means:

  • We work in cycles of 5 weeks of focused work and 1 week of cool down.
  • Each cycle sees one or more "bets" shipped, each having very specific and well defined requirements in addition to engineering sustainability work, and bugs.
  • During cool down, each of us choose what we want to work on, be it bugs, minor features, tech debt, exploring new concepts, or personal projects facilitated using our professional growth framework.
  • Each of us can create an "idea pitch" for an upcoming cycle, and move our ideas along to eventually transform into bets and product features.

As a front-end product developer at Whimsical, you will be helping to shape both the visual presentation and user experience at Whimsical by working on our collaboration tools using Canvas, improving our custom text-editor, and contributing to other user-facing features. You’ll be responsible for continually delighting our users with best-in-class thinking tools.

In addition to Shape Up, we also occasionally roll up our sleeves and do customer support to better understand our users and their needs, regardless of our role within the company.

Our primary mode of operation is asynchronous. We use real-time communication with great care, and only where it makes sense. We use Whimsical, email, Slack, and Zoom for our day-to-day communication.

But we also believe in spending quality time together, which is why we try to bring everyone from around the world together at least twice a year for what we call "Whimsical Summits". At Summits, we focus on getting to know each other better and building bonds that help us communicate better when we're apart.

Entry Challenge

In Whimsical we care deeply about spending our time on things that matter, which is why we have created this small entry task that we ask all candidates to complete and submit with their application.

This will allow us to treat every application with the attention and respect it deserves.

For this assignment, we ask that you recreate our Whimsical logo in pure HTML/CSS, without using any images. Your submission should look like the image seen below.

  • You can choose any online code editor or IDE/ framework you want, points are given for using vanilla CSS or SASS.
  • If you want to impress us, you can also add an animation to the logo on hover, or some other creative things that show off your CSS skills.
  • Try to make it look like the original logo as much as possible.

Once you have created the logo, please attach a link to your result in your application, and make sure we can view it by clicking the link, we would rather not have to install or compile different things in order to view your finished result.

About Whimsical

Whimsical was founded in 2017 by Kaspars Dancis and Steve Schoeffel to help people think and collaborate in the digital-first work environment.

Whimsical's product is expressive, fast, and delightful. We believe that software should spark joy, not dread.

We are a remote-first company and big proponents of remote work because it democratizes the opportunities for people everywhere.

Our operating philosophy is based on set of core principles, such as:

  • Sustainability: We don't believe in growth at all costs. Growth is a fundamental part of a healthy existence but we want it to be in balance with sustainability and bounded by ethical behavior. We strive to work calm, 40-hour work weeks. Whimsical is also committed to doing our part towards sustainable future for the planet.
  • Craftsmanship: We care deeply about our work. We are specialists, eager learners, and persistent in our pursuit of quality work. We're patient and committed because building great things takes time.
  • Long-term focus: We're building Whimsical for the long-haul, not a quick exit. We avoid shortcuts and consider every key decision from a 10+ year perspective.
  • Partnership Mindset: We’ve built the company around the idea that everybody who joins us should feel like they are partners in the business. Time is precious and we want Whimsical to be the place where people invest their time rather than sell it. Our equity offers are 100% transparent and above market average. We also pay everyone at the same level the same salary, no matter where they live.

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All information collected through this application is stored in Workable, Whimsical's Applicant Tracking System, where it will be used for internal recruitment purposes only.