Ruby on Rails Software Engineer - BuildBook

About BuildBook

BuildBook helps residential construction companies and their clients collaborate more effectively, make better decisions, and simplify the construction process. Builders love us because we help them minimize miscommunication that leads to costly mistakes, make more money, grow their business, and delight their customers. Homeowners love us because we give them a feeling of control and help make the construction and renovation process less stressful.

This industry is full of older “kitchen sink” style software products that are expensive, dated and difficult to use. Most people who need this software are non-technical and struggle on a daily basis to keep track of the details within their business. These struggles are where costly errors typically come in.

Our mission is to create intuitive software that is easily adoptable by builders and their clients alike, and improves the outcomes for both sides.

Helping Real People

Our end users are construction small business owners and their clients (homeowners). Every change we make, every feature we add has a visible, direct impact on the bottom line of our customers.  You will be able to see your work being used by real people and see the impact it has on their lives.  Our success as a company is directly linked to the success of our customers.  We’re only doing well if they’re doing well.

About the Job

Our core technology is Ruby on Rails and ReactJS on the web, along with a hybrid React Native mobile app.  You’ll be joining us in a period of rapid growth, so your primary directive will be to roll up your sleeves and build stuff.  

Our goal is for our product to be invisible to our users - it shouldn’t get in the way of their work, it shouldn’t be confusing, it shouldn’t require training.  That requires us to be very considerate of our experience, very collaborative in how we build our software, and very close to our customers through the sales and support process.  

You’ll work closely with business, design and customer support to craft the future of our product line, and occasionally spin up wholly new products and codebases.  At a minimum, you’ll need to be able to use your experience to work through ambiguity, identify issues, and offer suggestions.  

Here are a few concrete things that we’ve done lately and a few things on our short term roadmap to give you an idea of what kinds of things we’re up to and what you might do:

• Integrating our internal calendar system to sync with Google Calendar and others.
• Using our APM software to monitor and identify a bottleneck in a specific API endpoint and resolve it through various possible techniques.
• Addressing a user-reported bug in our React Native app where the keyboard, when it was active, was pushing some content outside of the accessible viewport.
• Using Twilio’s Conversations API to create a fully custom, integrated chat experience in our app for people on a project to talk with one another.
• Adding the ability to drag and drop to rearrange items in a to-do list.
• Identifying an issue in an open source project we rely on, fixing it, and getting that fix approved and merged.
• Adding in robust CSS3 and JavaScript animations to provide users with more fine-grained and delightful UI feedback.
• Spinning up a big net new feature behind a beta flag and slowly rolling it out to a test group.
• ...and so much more.

Our team is small but growing, and our roadmap is full of so much more than we could ever build right now.  In joining us, you’ll have an outsized impact on the success of the product and company. 

About You

We’re looking for someone who is prolifically productive - which generally means you’re quite comfortable with Rails and/or React (or something similar, like Vue), you know how to put things together, and you can get things done. 

We’re looking for someone with experience creating and shipping software in a production environment, and can show us or talk to us about it.  We don’t do whiteboard interviews or algorithm lottery questions. Instead, we think the strongest indicator of whether you can do this type of work is whether you have successfully done this type of work before.  And for this role, we’re going to ask you a lot about your past experience building products.

Our company is fully remote, and has been since before COVID.  Our only current limitations on remote work are that you reside in the continental United States and mostly work during US time zones.

We’re looking for someone who works and communicates well with others.  Building software is a collaborative process; it requires a diverse team with different types of experts who all work together regularly (and sometimes have to disagree and commit).  Teamwork like this is even more important in a distributed remote environment, where effective collaboration is a bit more challenging.

We’re looking for managers of one. We’re too small of a company right now for a heavier structure, and self-management and self-motivation are strong characteristics of success in a remote working environment.  This also means you’ll have a lot of autonomy in how to get your work done both logistically and technically.

To be considered, you’ll need…

Our requirements are flexible, as we’d rather be as inclusive as possible. As such, we’re looking for:

• Generally speaking, we think that people who fit the role description above will have at least 2+ years of job experience developing production-grade web or mobile apps, but we’re open to being convinced otherwise.  Note: we love and do hire fresh graduates, but this opening does require at least some previous real-world job experience.
• Experience with Ruby on Rails and/or React; OR experience in a similar tech stack and a willingness to learn Rails and/or React.
• Strong communication skills and/or experience with remote work.
• Residence in North America and the ability to work in a North American time zone.

Nice to have: BS in Computer Science, Math, EE, or other applicable degrees.

This role is open to candidates inside and outside of Colorado, but for those hired in Colorado the expected compensation range for this role is $125,000-155,000. The specific salary for the successful candidate will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.  And the salary range for successful candidates outside of Colorado may differ based on location.  This role is also eligible to participate in Housecall Pro’s equity plan and the following benefits: health care insurance (medical, dental, vision, disability), employee assistance program, 401(K), flexible time off, paid parental leave, tech reimbursement, and other company benefits. Housecall Pro is growing fast and we’re scaling our team to help enable and accelerate our growth. #LI-PI1