Lead Ruby on Rails Developer (m/f/d)

You are interested in the position as Lead Ruby on Rails Developer (m/f/d) at Instaffo GmbH?

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Please note that the position is only available to applicants from Germany.

The language requirements for this position are: English - Native speaker.

If you've signed up, you already have an idea of what we're building: our mission is to connect people with exciting career opportunities in the best possible way and help everyone realize their full professional potential 🙌🏻

No matter if you already like what you see or if you have ideas on what could be improved, we'd love to talk with you if you are an experienced Ruby on Rails developer who’s ready to take the next step as a Product Tech Lead. Work with us to achieve great things, influence product decisions, and guide our tech direction! 💡

Activities

• Develop and Lead: Build and maintain product features while guiding your team in technical decisions. In this role, you will take over an existing team and lead them to success. We already have three existing product teams, and you will be leading one of them. You’ll work in a small, agile, cross-functional team alongside a product manager, designer, and other developers. Each team autonomously defines and delivers valuable features to our customers. We use Scrum in 2-week sprints.
• Be Part of the Product Trio: Collaborate closely with the Product Manager and Product Designer as part of the "Product Trio." You’ll influence what we build and how we build it, contributing to product discovery, technical feasibility, and strategic prioritization.
• Note on time commitment: You'll spend around 70-80% of your time contributing directly to the code and 20-30% collaborating as a tech lead with the product team.
• Technical Excellence: Balance feature development with maintaining a healthy codebase. You’ll help shape technical roadmaps, prioritize tech debt, and ensure sustainable architecture. Our Ruby on Rails backend has 100% test coverage, and we aim to run on the latest major versions of core dependencies.
• Mentorship & Leadership: Support and guide developers on your team and beyond, fostering technical growth and strong engineering practices. Help remove roadblocks during sprints to ensure smooth delivery.
• Bridge Between Product & Development: Act as the crucial link between the product trio and developers within your team, ensuring smooth collaboration and mutual understanding. Additionally, foster cross-team alignment on technical decisions, participate in sprint planning, and contribute to a cohesive engineering culture across the organization.
• Remote-First & Global: Most of our R&D team is remote, and all important meetings are remote-first. While you can work remotely, you’re also warmly invited (though not required) to join us at the office in Heidelberg multiple times a year for OKR strategy meetings, as well as for our fun summer and winter events. Our company language is English. 🌍

⚡ Our Tech Stack

• Backend: Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, GraphQL
• Integrations: ChatGPT (AI), Klaviyo (Emailing), Google BigQuery (Data Warehouse)
• DevOps: GitLab CI/CD, fully automated deployements to Kubernetes with Helm and Terraform
• Frontend: React, TypeScript (JavaScript), Sass Modules, shared component library as npm package, react-query, zustand, zod, JSON-API. In parts also GraphQL and Next.js

Requirements

• At least 3 years of hands-on experience with Ruby on Rails. Experience with React is a plus.
• Strong knowledge of Ruby libraries (rspec, devise, sidekiq, searchkick), design patterns, and RESTful APIs.
• Experience with modern development practices (test automation, version control, Agile/Scrum).
• Leadership mindset: Ability to guide technical decisions, mentor developers, and collaborate effectively with product managers and designers.
• Interest in a startup environment, shaping not just the product but also the processes and team dynamics.
• Open to working as a full-stack developer if you’d like, but with a backend focus.

Team

We’re a fun, diverse team from originally 14 nations 🇩🇪🇧🇷🇱🇻🇻🇳🇧🇬🇺🇦🇷🇺🇧🇾🇮🇹🇲🇰🇧🇦🇮🇳🇿🇦🇻🇪, speaking English and passionate about delivering great software. Our R&D team has around 30 people, including engineers, data scientists, and product folks.

We work in small, cross-functional product teams that own specific product areas. Each team consists of a product manager, a product designer, and 3–5 developers. We collaborate across teams for technical tasks and work closely with data science and other departments.

The teams work in two week sprints for product issues, where we also allocate around 20% of our time for technical tasks which we together (across teams) prioritize. We use scrum to structure our workflow. While each team can work independently, you will of course also collaborate with members of the other teams for technical tasks, as well as collaborate with our data science team and other departments for some features.

Application Process

• Screening call with HR.
• Technical interview with our hiring manager, Patrick.
• Take-home assessment task.
• Final interview to discuss your assessment task.
• Meet the team to get to know your future colleagues.

We hire fully remote 🌍, but if you’re local or can visit our office in Heidelberg, we’d love to meet you in person! 🏢

Ready to build, lead, and grow with us? Apply now and let’s create something amazing together! 🚀✨

About The Company

Unsere Vision ist es, Menschen individuell darin zu befähigen ihr volles Potential zu erreichen.

Seit unserer Gründung Ende 2014 und unserem Go-Live Anfang 2017 bedeutet das für uns, Kandidaten den besten Weg zu bieten, schnell und mit wenig Aufwand den richtigen Tech-Job in einem inspirierenden Umfeld zu finden, bei dem das individuelle Entwicklungspotential am größten ist.

Unternehmen ermöglichen wir, auf eine einfache und intuitive Weise die besten Tech-Profile auf dem Markt zu finden, für sich zu gewinnen und somit schnell ein funktionierendes Tech-Team aufzubauen.

Unsere Recruitingplattform matched dabei Jobs mit Menschen und ermöglicht nicht nur einen reibungslosen Ablauf am Anfang des Bewerbungsprozesses, sondern sorgt durch den Fokus auf einen persönlichen Austausch über unseren Chat dafür, dass sich Unternehmen und Kandidaten auf Augenhöhe kennenlernen.

Begleite uns bei unserem weiteren Wachstum!

Ein Teil von uns zu sein bedeutet, Teil von etwas Großem zu sein und die Zukunft des Recruitings aktiv mitzugestalten und neu zu denken.

2019 haben wir bei den Gründerszene Awards im Bereich des stärksten Wachstums den dritten Platz belegt und holten uns im Bereich Technology den ersten Platz. Seit 2019 gehören wir laut Focus Business auch jährlich zu den TOP-Arbeitgebern im Mittelstand.

Bis 2033 möchten wir mit Instaffo die go-to Jobplattform für Wissenarbeiter in ganz Europa sein. Diesem Ziel kommen wir mit unserem ausgezeichneten Team und unserem großartigen Produkt Schritt für Schritt näher. Die Werte Ambition, Learning und Passion sind dabei das Fundament unseres Handelns:

Ambition bedeutet für uns, dass wir uns konstruktiv herausfordern und Fortschritt stark vorantreiben.

Unter Learning verstehen wir, dass wir proaktiv lernen und dabei Risiken eingehen. Fehler helfen uns immer wieder dabei, noch bessere Ergebnisse zu erzielen.

Unsere Passion resultiert daraus, dass wir lieben, was wir tun. Wir inspirieren, vertrauen und respektieren uns gegenseitig.

Bei Instaffo möchten wir Menschen wie dich dabei haben - ehrgeizig und vorwärts denkend, die mehr sein wollen, als ein weiterer Mitarbeiter. Erkennst du dich wieder und möchtest ein Teil von uns sein?