Job Description
Who we are
Most people dream of being able to play a musical instrument. We develop outstanding products that enable anyone to achieve this dream. Our first product is flowkey: a revolutionary app for learning to play the piano. After our launch in 2015, flowkey quickly became one of the global leaders in its category, with more than 5 million users from over 100 countries. We are also one of the exceptions in the startup world, as we have been profitable from the beginning. This enabled us to go our own way and create a great culture.
Why join us
We believe that the best companies will help you live your life the way you want and become the person you want to be. Here is how we strive to do that:
- Flexible working hours: We only schedule a few fixed meetings every week—you're free to arrange the rest of your time in the way that best suits you.
- Remote work—and a beautiful office: We’ve found that it makes a difference whether we see each other in person or through a screen. That’s why we’ve put much love into designing our beautiful and spacious office in Berlin. At the same time, we deeply value freedom so we’ve set up our collaboration in a way that enables us to work from anywhere.
- Shared success: We distribute part of the company's annual profits among the whole team, on top of a competitive salary. This way everyone shares in our continuous business growth.
- Support for your growth: If you want to learn a new language, attend a conference, or pursue other self-development goals, we'll cover the costs—up to €2,500 per year.
- Love of music and a piano for your home: Whatever style of music you enjoy, you’re sure to find like-minded people among us. And you’ll get your own piano to play at home.
Your role and responsibilities
As a Backend Software Engineer at flowkey, you will work alongside our world-class team on a diverse, modern tech stack. Together, we will create a wide-reaching impact throughout our organization and for millions of users around the world.
Your focus will be to ensure our website and apps perform as they should, performantly, focusing on databases, backend logic, APIs, infrastructure, and servers. You will work alongside our engineering team to establish and maintain efficient development, testing, and release workflows. Your role is more analytical and numbers based compared to a frontend role, but a keen understanding of the product is also highly beneficial.
We want to share with you our passion for innovation, curiosity, and learning. We encourage all team members to focus on areas that interest and excite them the most, and actively foster self-responsibility, self-direction, experimentation, and growth.
Requirements
Must have
- Strong analytical and problem solving skills, with proven experience
- Advanced skills in Javascript, GraphQL, and MongoDB
- Understanding of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Alibaba Cloud), serverless microservice infrastructure, and asynchronous message queues
- Familiarity with containerized deployments (e.g. ECS, Kubernetes)
- A knack for automated testing
- Eagerness to learn through a feedback culture and share knowledge with the team
Nice to have
- Experience with Apollo and/or Meteor
- Knowledge of payment and subscription platforms such as Braintree, App Store, Google Play, etc.
- Skills in PostgreSQL or CloudFormation / Terraform
- Familiarity with i18n / localization
- Proficiency with CI, Deployment, and other DevOps / MLOps topics
- Passion for music
- Active interest in contributing to open source
Experience in any particular technology or process is far less important to us than the ability to learn quickly, turn ideas into solid code, and easily ramp up in new areas.
We warmly encourage engineers from underrepresented backgrounds to apply, even if they feel unsure about meeting every job requirement.
>>> Click on Apply Now to be taken to the application page
An application for one Engineering position is automatically considered for all others. The details of your future role will be tailored specifically to your individual skillset, experience, knowledge, growth, and eventual ownership of code, features, and projects.
We look forward to meeting you!
Salary Range
Changing the way people learn instruments
Almost everyone dreams of playing an instrument, but only a small percentage of people end up making that dream come true. What’s in their way? A lack of time, money, and belief that they can do it. We’re creating a new standard for learning a musical instrument. One that's fundamentally easier, more affordable, and much more fun – making it possible for anyone to realize their dreams.
Our first product is flowkey: a revolutionary app for learning to play the piano. We launched flowkey in 2015 and it quickly became one of the global leaders in its category. Today, over 5 million users from more than 100 countries have learned piano with flowkey. We're also among a small handful of startups that were profitable right from the start, enabling us to go our own way and create a great culture.
Want to know more about how flowkey got started? Check out the TEDx Talk by our founder and CEO Jonas, where he explains the idea together with a pianist.
A culture that supports your freedom and growth
We believe that the best companies help you live your life the way you want and become the person you want to be. That's why we've created a culture that supports your personal freedom and growth by focusing on three main cornerstones:
• Freedom & responsibility
We all have unique life circumstances, needs, and preferences. That's why you're free to work wherever you want and whenever you're most productive. At the same time, we recognize that with freedom comes responsibility towards ourselves. It takes self-awareness and strength to take responsibility for your own development.
• Inner drive for growth
As we give a lot of freedom, we rely on the intrinsic motivation of our people to do the best work they can and grow both personally and professionally. The people we attract seek critical feedback, are open to other perspectives and see challenges as an opportunity for growth. We further promote growth by giving you a yearly budget of up to €2,500 for personal and professional development.
• Shared success
We want everyone at flowkey to have a share in the growing financial success of our business. One way we do this is by distributing part of the company's profits to the whole team.