Delicious Brains Inc Senior PHP App Developer (Laravel/Vue.js)

Hi, my name is Brad Touesnard. I’m the founder of Delicious Brains Inc, the makers of SpinupWP, a modern cloud-based server control panel with a special focus on WordPress. You connect SpinupWP to your own cloud server (e.g. DigitalOcean) and it will set it up to run WordPress sites lightning fast and allow you to manage those sites with ease.

We are a small but growing team of two developers, one designer, one marketer, and myself. I’m very proud to say that our little crew has been managing to delight thousands of customers since we launched SpinupWP in 2017.

Despite the crazy times we’re living in, we have big plans for 2021 and this is a great opportunity to join a small, growing team of talented folks building a product that customers love.

The Job

Currently, Ash, George, and Katelynn work full-time on SpinupWP, developing and maintaining the app as well as helping our support team in supporting our customers. Lewis, our in-house designer helps with all things design as well.

I’m looking for a talented PHP developer to join Ash, George, and Katelynn to help build new features for SpinupWP as well as help out with support and documentation.

The app is built in Laravel and Vue.js, so experience with these frameworks will be a bonus. You’ll also be using Ansible to make sure SpinupWP provisions servers and creates and maintains sites using our LEMP stack so experience configuring Linux servers and server software (Nginx, PHP, MySQL, Redis, etc) is another bonus.

We currently work in six-week cycles with a two-week cooldown period where you pick what you want to work on. All our code is committed to GitHub and your code will be reviewed by a member of the team using GitHub pull requests. Eventually you’ll be reviewing code as well.

We have a dedicated technical support team that can handle the majority of support requests, but there is always the odd one they will need the development teams’ help with. You’ll also join the rest of our team in writing content for our site. We send an email to our 11k subscribers every week about our content.

Responsibilities

• Help plan and define the scope of new features


• Build new features using modern PHP (Laravel), JavaScript (Vue.js) and Ansible


• Work on bug fixes and improvements during each cycle


• Maintain and write new unit and acceptance tests


• Write documentation and in-app copy


• Support our customers via email


• Write articles and tutorials for our blog


• Attend company retreats (see details below)

Requirements

• Expert PHP & JavaScript development skills


• 5 years of advanced PHP development


• 5 years of HTML & CSS development


• 2 years of JavaScript development (ES6/jQuery)


• 1 year working with git as source control


• Experience writing automated tests


• Experience working with complex APIs like Amazon Web Services


• Excellent English communication skills (spoken and written)


• Work hours that overlap some with the EST timezone


• Self-motivated and work well independently


• Comfortable working remotely (we don’t have an office)

Bonus Points

• Experience with an advanced JavaScript framework (Vue.js, React, Angular, etc)


• Experience building a web app using Laravel, especially queues


• Experience building REST APIs


• Experience configuring and maintaining Linux servers and server software
  (Nginx, PHP, MySQL, Redis, etc)


• Experience building WordPress plugins


• Experience with Ansible


• UX and design skills


• Open source contributions


• Computer Science degree or equivalent

About You

You’re thrilled to work with the latest hotness language or framework but also thrive working on a “fixer-upper” project. You respect old code, no matter how ugly it looks. You truly enjoy figuring out how old code works, refactoring it, and tackling the challenges that come with it. You have experience doing this type of work and know you love it.

You’re a problem solver who loves to analyze an issue, recreate it and track it back to the source of the problem. You won’t commit any code unless it’s fully tested and solves the problem. Better still, you write the tests to go with it.

You’re curious and love to learn. You embrace the opportunity to level up, learn something new and really dig into it. You’re a disciplined worker and have no trouble getting work done at home on any given day.

You value consistency above preference and will adopt new coding styles, standards, and tools to that end. You are stellar at identifying the simple, elegant solution in a sea of over-engineering possibilities.

Although you enjoy working with people to help you generate ideas and formulate a plan of attack on a project, you do your best work in isolation without interruption. You’re proactive in tackling things that need to be done without direction.

You’re exceptional at communicating in writing via instant message, email, etc. You’re ok on the phone and video chat too. You understand that clear, concise written communication is how remote teams thrive. Putting a pull request up for review without explaining its context is unheard of for you.

You own both successes and failures. When a project you’re leading turns into a disaster, you own it and you learn from it. You never point the finger at others.

You invite criticism and genuinely want to grow as a professional. You’re onboard with pushing each other to be better and are not afraid to give constructive criticism in addition to receiving it.

The Offer

• Remote First. We have always been a remote company, since the very start. Working from home has its challenges, but you’ll be surrounded by empathetic folks who have been successfully working from home for many years.


• Company Retreats. As a remote company, it’s super important to get some face time. In 2019 we had a blast in Berlin but we had to cancel our trip to Portugal in 2020. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up again soon. Will you be joining us?


• Location Independent. Work from wherever you’re happiest. All members of our team currently work from their homes in the US, Canada, the UK, India, Sweden, Egypt, and the Philippines.


• Choose Your Schedule. Most companies claim to have flexible hours, but the reality is often very different. We flex our hours for real. As long as on average you’re working the number of hours you’ve committed to working each week, we’re good. Most of our team commits to a 37.5-hour week, but some do 35 and some only 30. Anywhere between 37.5 and 30 hours per week works for us.


• Personal Development. If there’s a conference or event that will help you level up, the company will cover your expenses. You’re also allotted some time each month to learn something new unrelated to your job, participate in community discussions, and/or contribute to an open source project.


• Profit Sharing. I share a financial report with the team quarterly so everyone knows how the company is doing. And when the company does well, the team does well. Last year, on average team members received USD $3,600 each.


• Vacation and Holidays. This is flexible, but people typically start with four weeks of vacation they can schedule for themselves. The whole company also takes two weeks off in late December / early January when business quiets down. That’s a total of six weeks off per year. We strongly encourage time off and so everyone on our team uses up just about all their vacation each year.


• Paid Leave. For the birth or adoption of a child, the company offers 8 weeks of 100% paid leave for primary caregivers and 3 weeks for secondary caregivers. We also offer 5 paid sick days and 3 days of paid bereavement leave.


• Health Insurance. Members of the team based in Canada are eligible for health/dental/life/disability insurance on a company plan while those outside of Canada are eligible for a stipend to partially cover insurance costs.


• Competitive Salaries. The company typically pays salaries that are competitive with the market in which you reside. For this role, typical salary ranges would be:
  
  
  
  • United States – USD $90,000 – $140,000 / year
  
  
  • Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand – USD $85,000 – $120,000 / year
  
  
  • India, Argentina, Brazil – USD $45,000 – $65,000 / year
    There are situations that call for higher pay even when living in a region with a lower cost of living, so we’re flexible on this.
  
  
  
  

Apply

This job posting was written like an informal message to you. Please reply to it, introduce yourself, and let me know why you’re applying. Describe how you meet the Requirements, if you score any Bonus Points, if you’re the person I describe, and what’s on your resume that I ought not miss. Don’t forget to include a link to your resume. Send your reply to [email protected].

We are an equal opportunity employer. Application information that is prone to unconscious biases is hidden during the review process whenever possible. We judge the content of the applications on their own without knowledge of the applicant’s race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, or age. We support workplace diversity, but not at the expense of equal opportunity and meritocracy. We’re looking for talented and empathetic people no matter their other attributes.

I look forward to reviewing your application.

Best of luck,

Brad Touesnard
Founder of SpinupWP