| Coding challenge | Tech jobs at Sortable |
Check out our coding challenge to get your resume to the top of the pile! Please send your resume to apply@sortable.com
We’re hiring
We are looking for talented software engineers who have a passion for using data and algorithms to make complex tasks simple. You should have experience building performant, maintainable Web-based systems, and should be able to do so in about one third the time that most competent people think possible. Top notch written and verbal communication skills are essential.
Currently we have two open positions for experienced software engineers.
Sortable is a 7 person, engineering-focused startup looking to hire the very best talent. Our decision engine helps people make complex purchase decisions by understanding the differences between products/services in order to recommend the best fit for the user’s requirements.
Responsibilities
We’re less focused on product deliverables and more focused on empowering developers to make a difference in our goal to be the #1 recommendation service in the world. We expect everyone to think about and take seriously the impact they will have on everything from user experience and marketing effectiveness to platform performance and code maintainability.
Because we tend to hire strong generalists you’ll have the opportunity to work on many parts of the system, especially those you’re passionate about and feel you can make a real difference in. You’ll take full responsibility to build and release new features, entire websites and apps. You’ll work on offline data analysis, server-side logic, and front-end Web user interfaces. You’ll have the opportunity to have your voice heard, and the leeway and tools to release awesome products.
Requirements
Must Haves
- A strong desire to solve tough problems
- Ability to design, code and test high quality software
- Take responsibility and release features users love and that drive our vision forward
- Back-end software development, databases, algorithms, performance, threading
- Front end web development with XHTML, CSS, Javascript
- We’re a small team, you’ll need to fit in well
Bonus Points!
- Worked at a startup before
- Experience with Scala or other functional languages
- Active in an open source project
- History of creating personal software projects
- Active blog (ideally tech-related)
- Experience with Linux or other Unix
- Like to spend lots of time researching products before buying
Technology
We develop almost exclusively with open source tools and technologies. We want our team of developers to have fun and be productive, so we’ll expect you to bring your own ideas and suggestions as to what hardware and software should be used.
At Sortable we currently develop on Ubuntu, using PostgreSQL and Redis for data storage and Mercurial for source control. We use Jenkins/Hudson for continuous builds and single click deploys up to Amazon EC2. Most of our code is written in Scala, some in Python, and lots of bash scripts hold things together. We don’t expect you to know Scala — we didn’t when we started Sortable — but it would be a plus if you do. Scala is a blend of object-oriented and functional programming, and compiles to Java bytecode running on the JVM. Compared to Java, Scala code tends to be more concise, less repetitive, and almost always more fun to write. If you’ve developed with C# or Java you’ll have no problem with Scala, but you should be interested in or experienced with functional programming.
How to Apply
Please send your resume to apply@sortable.com. If your resume stands out we’ll be in touch with you for an interview.
If you want to really impress us we’ve devised a coding challenge. It will give you an example of the types of problems we work on at Sortable. We believe this is way more fun than writing a cover letter. Completing the coding challenge and sending your solution along with your resume to challenge@sortable.com is the best way to show us how much you love programming.
