Complex Systems Engineer (Backend - Python)

OnTruck

OnTruck is a European start-up devoted to bringing the road transportation industry to the 21st century. We realised that, despite how present mobile technology is in our day-to-day lives, it hasn't yet reached such a critical industry. Our initial product is a B2B platform to streamline the finding of the right carrier for your freight. You can think of it as an Uber for trucks.

Our headquarters are in the center of Madrid, close to several public transportation alternatives as well as public bike stations. We all work from the office to maximise face-to-face interactions and therefore we keep remote working to a minimum.

The challenge

  • The road transportation industry has been stuck in the same way of doing things for the past 30 years, with complex over-the-phone transactions that could be sped up and more efficient using the right technology. Figuring our product out and getting users to switch is a tough challenge and we want your insights and experience.

The team

  • Every one of us has had several start-up experiences and on average we have 10+ years of experience in somehow similar challenges. We know success, we know failure; we've built platforms from scratch, we've dealt with large legacy systems. We care about each other and about the product we're building.
  • Some of the past projects where our engineers have been involved before joining OnTruck are: building the billing system for one of the largest telephony operators in Spain, building up and optimising complex marketplaces handling millions of orders a month, building real time video chats, building a global oauth/identity provider, improving the garbage collector of the JVM, creating social network libraries even before Facebook existed, building the Eurofighter simulator used to train pilots, building kernel modules to deal with real-time processor allocation, creating NLP algorithms to score user comments and timeline recommendation algorithms, building software to manage a backbone network, building the mobile apps of tier 1 banks, building mobile e-readers for millions for users, integrating mobile apps with Arduinos and dealing with the logistic platform of a big supermarket chain.
  • Investors like our concept and team and we've been quite successful in fundraising and gathering resources to support our future growth.

The engineering culture

  • We value speed of iteration and best practices and we care about our craft: both our API and key components have 100% test coverage, for instance.
  • We get engineers as close to the business problems as possible, so everybody is involved in solution design. We have mechanisms to enable anybody in the company to bring their new ideas to decision makers since we believe that innovative ideas come from everywhere.

The stack

  • We have a decoupled architecture, based on REST APIs and asynchronous services. We work with React in the frontend platforms (customers and admin), native in mobile apps (truck drivers), Python/Django in the transactional backend and Elixir for real-time functional needs. Our DB is PostgreSQL and the queues run on RabbitMQ.
  • We use a dedicated ERP to avoid reinventing the wheel there and we also have built a DWH/Analytics platform which takes advantage of external solutions.

What we offer

  • An office in the centre of Madrid.
  • A laid-back culture where everybody is encouraged to participate in discussions and contribute.
  • Opportunities for personal growth and learning (we hold regular tech talks and encourage working on different parts of the platform).
  • Competitive compensation and stock options packages. We want our engineers to have ownership and participate in company success.
  • Flexible schedule (though no regular remote working since we believe in face-to-face communication).

What we're looking for

  • You're not afraid of tough challenges, both product-wise and technical, and like to contribute your views.
  • You've built complex systems before, ideally both web platforms and software for other industries. You like both coding and designing system architecture.
  • You have significant industry experience: your future peers have 10+ experience solving this type of problems and we're looking for somebody on the same level. Don't worry if you don't fully meet the 10+ years of experience; just tell us how you managed to get to that level of experience faster and which complex projects you were already part of.
  • You care about the product you're building and the problem you're solving, not just about the technology you're using. You pride yourself in choosing the best technical solution for a problem by taking all constraints into account, instead of chasing the latest shiny not-ready-for-production thing for the sake of it.
  • You master either frontend or backend and have some knowledge of the other. Ideally you're full-stack and can code both fluently. Don't worry if you're not familiar with our particular stack; it's not essential, we'll give you support to learn it.
  • You have a degree (self-learned might work as well but elaborate on how you got your knowledge in computer science) in something like math, engineering or physics and you have significant knowledge in computer science, networks, algorithms, data structures and design patterns.
  • You enjoy working in a team and appreciate modern development techniques such as code reviews, pair programming, high-coverage testing and automating things. You are polite when reviewing other people's work and take it well when you get feedback on yours.
  • You prefer working in a fast-paced start-up, with quick iterations, changes of direction, tight budgets, and chaos over a hierarchical, well-structured corporation with clear and well-defined assignments, and career paths.

If you have questions please get in touch. If you think that you'd be a good fit but you're missing on some of the points, apply anyway and tell us why you think you'd be a good fit anyway.

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