This position is 100% remote but only eligible to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
Hi, my name is Brad Touesnard. I’m the founder and CEO of SpinupWP, a modern cloud server control panel designed to manage WordPress sites and soon Laravel apps.
We’re a very small team. There are our developers George, James, Ash, our designer Lewis, our marketer Caillie, and our L2 support team Andre and Jaime. I have a background as a developer, but these days I’m a product manager, a marketing manager, and whatever other hats need wearing. I’m very proud to say that our team has been managing to delight thousands of customers, working from our homes since 2017.
We have big plans for the next 12 months and this is a great opportunity to join a small team of talented folks building a beloved product.
The Job
I’m looking for a talented PHP developer to join our team 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 big bonus. We’re in the process of rebuilding the frontend of the app with Tailwind and Inertia.js so experience with these would be great too. You’ll also be writing Bash scripts that SpinupWP will execute to operate on servers and sites. Advanced Bash scripting skills and experience configuring Linux servers and server software (Nginx, PHP, MySQL, Redis, etc) is a must.
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 a developer to look at.
If you’re interested in writing an article or tutorial for our 10K+ email subscribers, you’ll be more than welcome.
Responsibilities
- Help plan and define the scope of new features
- Build new features using modern PHP (Laravel) and JavaScript (Vue.js & Inertia.js)
- Work on bug fixes and improvements
- Maintain and write new unit and acceptance tests
- Help with documentation
- Support our customers via email
- Attend company retreats (see details below)
Requirements
- Authorized to work in Canada
- Expert PHP & JavaScript development skills
- 3+ years of advanced PHP development
- 3+ years of development with a reactive JavaScript framework (Vue.js, React, Svelte, etc)
- 3+ years of HTML & CSS development
- Advanced Bash scripting skills
- Experience configuring Linux servers and server software (Nginx, PHP, MySQL, Redis, etc)
- Experience writing automated tests
- Knowledgeable in Web-Queue-Worker architecture
- Experience working with complex APIs like Amazon Web Services
- Experience working with git as source control
- Excellent English communication skills (spoken and written)
- Self-motivated and work well independently
- Love working remotely
Bonus Points
- Experience building a web app using Laravel
- Experience developing REST APIs
- Experience building WordPress plugins
- 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’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 feel a profound sense of accomplishment after helping a customer resolve an issue that was frustrating them. You have a strong compulsion to help when people need it. It’s important to you that people get the best possible answer, not just a reply.
When you encounter something you’re not sure about, you stop, research, ask questions, and make sure, rather than giving it a best guess. The idea of sending incorrect information to a teammate or customer is mortifying and completely unacceptable to you.
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 direct 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. People being confused by a message you’ve posted is extremely rare.
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 take your time ingesting feedback from your teammates and view it as a growth opportunity rather than an attack on your character or abilities. You’re not afraid to give constructive criticism yourself to push your teammates to grow.
The Offer
- Remote First. We have always been a remote company, since the very start in 2017. Working from home has its challenges, but you’ll be surrounded by compassionate folks who have been successfully working from home for many years.
- Company Retreats. Check out our previous company retreats. Although it hasn’t been decided yet, we’re considering having a company retreat in 2025.
- Location Independent. Work from wherever you’re happiest. All members of our team currently work from their homes in Canada, the UK, the US, Panama, and South Africa.
- 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.
- 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 & Exit 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. When we sell the company, members of the team get a share of the proceeds based on their tenure.
- Company Holidays. Things get pretty quiet in late December / early January, so we always treat ourselves to a couple of weeks off to reboot during this time.
- 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 through the company’s Chambers of Commerce plan while those outside of Canada are eligible for a stipend to partially cover insurance costs.
- Competitive Salary. For this position, the salary will be in the $130,000 – $160,000 CAD range. Where you fall in that range will depend on skills and experience.
Apply
To apply, send an email to work@spinupwp.com describing why you’re applying and why you’re a fit for this role. Include your resume. If we like what we see, we’ll arrange a 15 minute meet and greet call to kick things off.
We are an equal opportunity employer. We judge the content of the applications on their own without consideration 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 & CEO
SpinupWP
Last Updated: November 17, 2024