Backend Python engineer for SaaS cloud monitoring

We're looking for a salaried full time Backend Python Engineer to work remotely from within Europe or from our London office. You will be joining an existing team of 20 to work on our server monitoring and cloud management service, Server Density.

We help our customers stay online, giving teams the right information at the right time so they can solve performance problems, and keep their systems running! Our product helps the UK National Health Service run the 999 emergency systems for ambulance response, it helps organisations like Greenpeace run effective campaigns and helps startups launch without embarrassment. Monitoring might be behind the scenes, but it has a real impact!

What will you be working on?

• Backend engineering - you will be working with our product backed with Python, Tornado (and other async Python libraries), Kafka/Storm, Google Cloud Bigtable and MongoDB. You'll be designing, building and usability testing new functionality and improving existing features.
  
• Feature development - we have a long roadmap and you will get to lead development on major new functionality. This isn't backend internal work - everything will be customer facing.
  
• Customer development - you'll get to see how our customers use the product on a daily basis so you can help fix bugs and improve existing functionality based on real feedback. Why have a stock reply we send to hundreds of customers experiencing the same problem when a quick code fix can solve it once and for all?
  
• Writing for a large audience - our blog is popular because our team write about common problems and interesting developments we're experiencing. You will have the opportunity to tell people about the interesting fix you made and why it worked so well, a tricky problem you were able to solve or teach our subscribers an improvement you were able to implement. Some of our team have even developed these into talks at local and international meetups and conferences, which we encourage with preparation help, marketing sponsorship and all travel expenses paid.

Skills & Requirements

• You must have at least 2 years experience programming Python in production web application environments, and ideally other programming languages as well.
• You must be fluent in English and able/willing to communicate clearly via email and phone.
• We will require multiple recent code samples, ideally contributions to open source projects.

About Server Density

• We're writing hundreds of thousands of metrics per second into Google Cloud Bigtable, through an event based alert processing system built using Kafka and Storm.
• All our development is done in-house and we have experience with every technology we use - no waiting for external contractors or unknown areas of our code.
• We use various technologies depending on the job - React + Coffeescript for the product UI, Objective C for our native iPhone app, Java for our Android app, Python for our *nix server agent and our backend services, Travis for automated builds and testing and C# for the Windows monitoring agent.
• We're design led - everything starts with how the UI looks and works to maintain our reputation for beautiful and functional interfaces.
• We have an open and transparent culture: policy changes are proposed via Github pull requests, everyone has access to support tickets, analytics, roadmaps and everyone is encouraged to provide their comments on every aspect of the company. This often happens within whole company channels but also in private with the senior team, where appropriate.
• Our agent source code is released under the FreeBSD open source license - we wouldn't want to install stuff on our servers where we didn't have access to the source code (even if most people will never check it).
• Anyone can deploy at any time, supported by an automated build system and extensive tests.
• You should mention the phrase "Porcupine Tree" in your cover note to prove you have read the whole job description.
• We're backed by a number of leading investors with connections all around the world - UK, Europe, the US and Japan.
• We have flexible working hours and for 1 week every 2 months everyone gets to develop on anything they want that may be outside the normal roadmap and so would not normally have time to do. We call this random week. Past projects have included open sourcing libraries, building automated testing systems and drawing new designs for our mascot.
• Anyone has the opportunity to attend conferences, fully paid by the company. Even better if you are speaking!
• We share on-call responsibility throughout the team with particular consideration for rest and off-call.
• We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Desired Skills

• Backend Development
• MongoDB
• Tornado

Contact Info

• Company Website: https://www.serverdensity.com/